


The World Was Saved But Not For Me

by Hirrient



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Assassination Plot(s), Bickering, Demonic Possession, Dragon Age II Spoilers, Dragon Age Lore, Dragon Age Spoilers, Dragon Age: Inquisition Spoilers, Espionage, Eventual Romance, Hate Sex, Hurt/Comfort, Intrigue, Love/Hate, M/M, Partners to Lovers, Partnership, Plot, Possession, Prejudice, Romance, Smut, art!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-08-28
Packaged: 2018-03-22 08:02:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 27,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3721333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hirrient/pseuds/Hirrient
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hawke sacrificed himself in the fade for the Inquisition, leaving Fenris behind to grieve.<br/>Dorian would do anything for Inquisitor Trevelyan, but when he's tasked for a covert operation in babysitting the Inquisition's newest recruit- a reckless Fenris- things don't go smoothly. Love never does. </p><p>Updates weekly. Crit is very welcome!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: Fenris's in-game backstory is referenced, with gentle insinuation of rape/non-con. I made efforts to approach this subject carefully, but please read at your discretion.

_ _

 

_‘I’m sorry Fenris’_

_—_ _Hawke_

 

Dorian Pavus shook his sorry head and dragged his feet towards the library. He wasn’t going to sleep on this night— not with the Inquisitor’s words plaguing his mind.

 _If that man’s penchant had only been for women_ , Dorian thought, still in a daze.  _That, at least, couldn’t have come as a shock._ It had always been the most likely thing, after all. Skyhold had no shortage of becoming girls to choose from. Cassandra—now  _there_  was a woman Dorian himself could almost turn for. So when Trevelyan showed no signs of interest in any of them, Dorian had thought,  _you’ve_   _got this in the bag, you handsome devil, you._  

With Corypheus defeated and the world saved, at least for a while, there had seemed no better opportunity to plan to make his interests known.  _Carpe diem_  was on everyone’s minds—everyone who found themselves miraculously still alive. The past week had been filled with sombre procession, honouring those fallen with the long-overdue attentions which were inconceivable in the midst of war. At the close of the trying affair of honouring the fallen Hero of Kirkwall, perhaps something had been decided by the Inquisitor, who came to find Dorian the following morning at breakfast.

‘I was hoping to talk to you,’ he had murmured quietly. ‘My rooms—tonight.’

Dorian had come as bid of course, and  _Maker_ , on legs as shaky as a virgin’s. He certainly hadn’t felt that way in many years.

‘Well, Inquisitor,’ he began, striding into the private quarters, and setting to make show of owning the place. ‘You’ve sealed the breach, won a war and slain the un-slayable.  _And_  you did it all without getting yourself killed. I’ll admit, I’m impressed.’

He reclined into a chaise, and thought he was making a fine show of nonchalance. He even, for a touch, helped himself to a bowl of grapes on the end table. Then the Inquisitor sat down by him and looked him dead in the eye. Dorian suddenly wasn’t so confident with how he was holding up.

‘I never could have done it without you, Dorian,’ the man said in earnest. Maker, did Trevelyan always make everyone else feel this way? Like they were the only one that mattered? Like they’d give him anything, the moment he asked?

‘Oh, I bet you say that to all the girls,’ Dorian’s mouth moved in reflex, mind barely able to cope with his mounting nerves.

‘I’m serious Dorian,’ the Inquisitor— _his_  Inquisitor said, with such a face and voice that couldn’t be doubted. ‘If I have something to be grateful for in all of this, it’s for growing close with you. From the moment I met you in Redcliffe you’ve pulled me through. You’re a blessing as my colleague and as my friend.’

‘True,’ Dorian smirked to hide his giddiness. ‘All true.’

‘So I need to be honest with you. It wouldn’t be right if I lead you to hope—‘

Dorian jerked upright. ‘No.’ He held up a shaking hand. ‘ _No_ , go back to the part where you’re stroking my ego, I liked that part  _far_  better.’

‘I wanted to say something sooner—’ the other hastened. ‘It’s not like I haven’t  _noticed_ , but with everything that’s been happening—‘

‘Good man, have mercy—’ Dorian forced a laugh and stood up and eyed the door for escape. It was happening again. Like always. Why had he bothered to hope it could be different? ‘No need to say more. I perfectly understand.’

But the Inquisitor, never doing things by half, was not content to leave it there. ‘I finally have a  _moment_ , and—‘

 _Please stop talking,_ Dorian wanted to beg _._ ‘I assure you,’ he managed. ‘It’s fine.’

Trevelyan stood and reached to touch Dorian’s elbow. ‘I just don’t feel  _that_  way about anyone,’ he said with a crooked, embarrassed sort of smile. ‘I never have.’ 

‘It’s just a little crush,’ Dorian lied. He’d almost sound convincing, too, if his voice didn’t tremor. ‘You flatter yourself too much, what, it’s almost like you think you’re a god’s gift to man.’ 

 _Funny joke,_ Dorian thought, gesturing to the glowing green mark.  _Laugh_.  _Oh, Maker, laugh and stop looking at me like you know you’re crushing me._

‘Are you going to have these talks with everyone?’ Dorian went on for convincing effect. ‘You might have to, you know. Saving the world has the unfortunate side effect of making everyone rather love you, I’m afraid. Heavy burden.’

 _Including me_ , he realised he may as well have said, to his abject horror.

‘Dorian—’

‘Really though, _no one?_ Not _ever?’_ Dorian stumbled on, determined to pretend it had evaded Trevelyan’s detection. ‘ _No one?_ Not _ever? No sex_? Not even a little bit?’

‘Not even a little bit,’ the Inquisitor shrugged with an apologetic smile. ‘And you only talk this erratically when someone does something truly abhorrent, like raise a demon army or spill red wine on good robes.’ Then he quietened, and murmuring as if to himself, added, ‘this last week—So many lost in this war. I don’t think Varric will ever really forgive me for what happened at Adamant— for what happened to Hawke. I don’t want to fail anyone ever again.’

‘You damn fool’, Dorian cursed, and let his shoulders sag. His game was up. He couldn’t deceive this man, who laid his hands on Dorian’s shoulders and searched his eyes,  _needing_  Dorian to rally.

‘You saved Thedas,’ Dorian said gently. ‘You haven’t failed anyone. Least of all me.’

‘Friends?’ Trevelyan said, looking—to Dorian’s dismay—as kind, as concerned, and as incomparably handsome as ever.

‘Until the very end,’ Dorian promised - and he meant it. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go. There is a library in dire need of…me pretending to be doing something in it. You understand.’

 

And so here he was, striding purposefully towards distraction and bottles of wine. He broke out under moonlight that glinted off the frosty grass of the yard. Half way across, he heard a tinkle, and then a faint crash. If he hadn’t been awake and passing under the windows of the Inquisitor’s quarters, no soul would have heard. Dorian turned his heel, and broke into a run.

The door exploded off its hinges with a bolt of lightening, showering the two figures within. The Inquisitor was backed to the wall, a great broadsword pricking the apple of his throat. Gripping it so hard that his knuckles had turned white was a man. On second look, not a  _man_ —too slim. An elf. White hair. Entire body heaving with pants. With  _rage_.

It took a second longer to read the situation. Trevelyan could handle himself, and his calm gaze met Dorian’s as if to say;  _I’m fine._  Dorian let the sparks filling his hands cracked back into non-existence. The only reason the elf wasn’t dead on the ground already was because the Inquisitor did not will it.

‘Know who I am?’ The elf growled. His voice was deep and deadly.

Trevelyan dared not nod, but it was in his eyes. ‘Varric warned me you might come, Fenris,’ he said, the sword nicking his throat just from the mere movements of speech. A bead of blood began to well at the scratch.

 _Fenris_ , thought Dorian. That name was somehow familiar.

‘You made Hawke die,’ the elf hissed, his voice so low—so hateful— that it frosted Skyhold’s stones and chilled Dorian’s spine. ‘You made him to stay. You made him die for you and there wasn’t even his body left for me.’

‘There will come no day where I forget his sacrifice,’ Trevelyan said, heavily.

‘There will come no minute—no merciful second for  _me_ , Inquisitor,’ Fenris snarled.

 _Fenris_. Dorian racked his brain, but recalling was like trying to catch smoke between one’s fingers.

‘You’re not here to kill me,’ the Inquisitor said. ‘You’re here to find out why Hawke did what he did—what Cause was worth the Champion of Kirkwall’s life.’

Fenris gripped his blade now with both hands, as if one was trying to hold the other back from sundering head from body.

‘Honor Hawke,’ said the Inquisitor. ‘Join the Inquisition.’

Fenris let out a yell of rage. He drew back his sword, as if to bring it down—

A ruined soul could carry on, sustained only by the blind fury of grief. At least—they could for a while. Dorian remembered how far he had run from Tevinter before he had burned out, fleeing his homeland upon discovering his father’s plots to bind him with blood magic. Yet Dorian’s anger did burn out, and that had been worse. Without anger for distraction, he’d been left with _nothing_ , sitting on the edge of a bed in some dirty tavern room, down to his last coppers, clutching his face in his hands and trying to stifle hopeless sobs.

The Inquisitor knew marred souls. He seemed to attract them like a magnet, and he had tugged on the only thread that was keeping this elf together.

Fenris did bring his blade down: down on the stone floor with a violent clatter. Then, as if all the fight was gone, his entire body slumped. He’d been unravelled. He turned his head, to regard the surroundings he was only now aware of, and Dorian caught his first sight of the elf’s face. 

Flesh branded with Lyrium.

 _That,_  Dorian remembered. Dorian remembered clearly now.  _Fenris_. The slave of a Tevinter Magister who had once received Dorian’s father and himself—then not even twenty— as guests. This was the Fenris who had once served wine to them with dead eyes. Fenris, who had watched his master warily at all moments—who flinched away every time he spoke and moved. The elf with Lyrium that had been burned into his skin, like they had burned into Dorian’s mind those many long years ago.

 

Yes, Dorian remembered Fenris. He’d never quite been able to forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by me. Will draw for $$- Msg me on hirrient.tumblr.com :)


	2. II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll be updating weekly~
> 
> Thanks everyone for your warm support for chapter I. Special thanks to my friend and beta reader Anna who always knows how to bring out the best in my work. 
> 
> I'm really excited about sharing this project with you guys. Enjoy the chapter!

Fenris was not welcomed among the ranks of the Inquisition.

It would have been enough for many that he was an elf. Being branded with lyrium was off-putting for those more tolerant, and being a _Vint_ sealed the deal for most of those remaining. Yet it went deeper than that. The ranks of the Inquisition burned with tension. Templars and apostates still struggled to live together. Qunari, Vints and Elves were forced on one another daily. Locked together in a pit of bad blood, Corypheus had been something to hate _together_. With him destroyed, it was inevitable that they look to isolate some new common enemy on which to scapegoat their conflicts, if only to bare one another. Dorian understood that side of society too well. They had done it to him, not so long ago.

It was that which birthed the paranoid rumor that was the most damning of Fenris. Dorian had heard the talk. It alleged that the elf, holding the Inquisitor accountant for the Hero of Kirkwall’s death, had come seeking deadly retribution and patiently plotted his revenge. There were nights, not uncommon, where the accused sat alone to meals, darkened with bruises and more then once with a cut lip and bloodied nose.

Varric would sit with him, but never for long. The memories it sparked must have been too raw. Cole sometimes hovered by like an awkward satellite, but he was growing more human by the day and it was as if he was forgetting how to listen. Months went by, and then six had passed marking a year since Hawke’s death.

Nothing had changed for Fenris.

 

What made him all the more hated in Skyhold was the way the Inquisitor instantly recognized the newcomer’s skill. Fenris was assigned missions—Leliana’s. The ones that were deemed too risky for any of her other agents. Absurdly, that was seen by the ranks as some reward to be jealous of. Only the Inquisitor’s inner circle knew it was because Fenris _volunteered_.

 _He wants to die_ they all thought, but no one actually said. Until the Inquisitor did.

‘That last mission he very nearly succeeded.’ Trevelyan said to Dorian one morning on seeking him out among the shelves of the library. ‘We had to go in and pull him out. It compromised everything.’

‘Perhaps he wasn’t too pleased that you did, either,’ Dorian suggested, looking up from a particularly dusty tome.

‘Varric came and saw me,’ Trevelyan said, rubbing his face with his hands. He sounded dogged. ‘He said Hawke didn’t die for this and he’s right. I would appreciate if you would… keep an eye on Fenris. Leliana has a mission she feels I best entrust to the both of you.’

‘You want me to work with him?’ Dorian exclaimed, snapping his book closed with a cracking thud and a cloud of dust. ‘I can tell you now that it won’t work out terribly well. I’m a mage. An Altus no less. Perhaps it has somehow managed to escape your superior intelligence but he’s really _not_ a fan of those.’

‘No other objections, then?’ the Inquisitor folded his arms.

‘He’s _scary?’_ Dorian smirked.

Trevelyan laughed at that. ‘Empress Celene holds a conference in the Chateau L'été. It’s five nights of ballrooms and courtly intrigue. It has to be you Dorian, who else can I trust not to get themselves murdered in a game of chancy politics?’

Dorian had to admit it did sound somewhat like his element.

‘Or worse,’ Dorian smirked, warming to the idea, ‘Shame the Inquisition with their terrible dancing.’

Trevelyan laughed again, a little self consciously, but looked pleased at having flattered Dorian into consent.

‘But now, hold on,’ Dorian said. ‘I may be one thing. But _him._ There’s babysitting and then there’s miracle working. You may as well send Sera in a dress and ask her to be _nice.’_

And then the Inquisitor revealed the real madness in his plan.

‘Fenris will go undercover in the servant’s quarters.’

‘—As a slave?’ Dorian exclaimed. ‘He’s probably _not_ going to like that, just so you know.’

‘Cole says you know him,’ Trevelyan said, giving Dorian a funny, curious look. ‘Says you’ve been having…dreams.’

‘Ah bless.’ Dorian folded his arms, twigging. ‘Yes, now I see your plot. The old, “ _you both like men,_ _you should like men together”_ maneuver, _and_ on a sexy undercover mission? You outdo yourself. I’m onto you Inquisitor. And while he’s not terrible to look at, my dreams aren’t like _that_ , if you must pry.’

The Inquisitor gave him a silent, expecting look.

‘Fine,’ Dorian surrendered. ‘I’ll be your man. Maybe I’ll even have a chat with him, Vint to Vint. I’ll start with ‘ _How do you miss slavery?’_ and move onto ‘ _What is your favorite thing about blood magic?_ ’. How do you think that will work for me? The merits of my tact aside though, people will start thinking I’m a _kind man_ if you make me to do this.’

‘That’s why you’re perfect for the job,’ the Inquisitor said with a warm smile that made Dorian ache.

 

Dorian _was_ having dreams about Fenris. They were not the nice sort. That night one catapulted him awake and upright in a cold sweat; panting and staring into the blackness of his room, meditating on his homeland. It was agony to love and hate something so much at the same time.

‘ _Vishante Kaffas_ ,’ he cursed under his breath. ‘ _Damn_ my countrymen. Who gets off burning _lyrium_ into a person?’

Dorian had felt no sadness when he’d heard news that Magister Denarius had been murdered: he had been the embodiment of everything about the magisterium that Dorian abhorred. The man had got what was due to him. Few deserving Magisters did.

 

Come the following week, Dorian was sent for to report to Leliana for briefing. When he entered her tower, steeling himself to have his robes ruined by raven droppings, he found Fenris already waiting against a wall with arms folded. The elf surveyed him coldly before turning to fix his gaze on Sister Nightingale.

‘You’re here,’ she said upon Dorian’s arrival, setting aside a report. ‘I will begin by making it clear that the Inquisitor has signed off on this mission because he thinks, under my advice, that it is a safe one. You should know I hope it will prove to be far from so.’

‘How fun,’ Dorian said dryly. ‘Do tell me more about my untimely death.’

‘That is the problem,’ said Leliana. ‘I have suspicions, but I am, you might say, working blind on this particular mission.’

Dorian let out a long sigh. ‘It gets better.’

‘The chateau will be the crucible of peaceful negotiations,’ Leliana continued, pacing in front of a window. ‘Political tensions are higher than ever now that we have Corypheus dead and each other to focus on fighting once more. The last time there was a gathering of this sort, it was at the Conclave. You perhaps may share my unease at the parallels. Having sided with the templars, it is likely that our enemies may possess a command of magic. That is why, Dorian, your expertise may prove invaluable.’ Leliana stopped her pacing, and turned suddenly to assess Dorian with a long unnerving gaze.

‘You may have noticed our Inquisitor is experiencing something of a grieving period.’ she said, careful to choose her words. ‘He is not so much liking to _delegate_ of late. I think it would be best if he does not know the full extent of my suspicions until we have proved them and perhaps alleviated the danger.’

‘You’re saying,’ and Dorian cleared his throat and put on his best Leliana voice; ‘ _let’s not pressure our Inquisitor to feel he’s needed to thunder in and fix up everything, as usual.’_

Leliana pulled an affronted face. ‘I do _not_ sound like that,’ she said folding her arms.

‘Really?’ Dorian acted shocked. ‘I thought I sounded just like you.’

She clicked her tongue and pressed on. ‘It’s more than just his saviour complex. Our Inquisitor is many things, but a spy he is not. He is not naturally suspicious, and at times one can read him like a book. I fear he may be in more danger than we are aware and I will not take any risks…there is something just beyond my vision…’

She returned to her pacing, lost in frustration.

‘I for one, agree with you.’ Dorian said. ‘I’m sure that whatever it is, I can handle it.’ Leliana nodded her head in satisfaction, and then slid her eyes across to the elf who had held his silence throughout the briefing.

‘Fenris?’

All he said in response was a decisive and bristling ‘It will be done.’

‘Just as usual,’ she responded as if she hadn’t really been expecting much more.

They were both handed their coordinates and dismissed. Dorian had no sooner descended the third step than Leliana called a last departure after him.

‘We _all_ love our Inquisitor, Dorian. See that we gain some clarity.’


	3. III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Changing the rating from 'mature' to er...'explicit' in preparation for next week's chapter ;~)  
> Enjoy the new chap!

Dorian expected blind hatred from his new colleague when he walked out of Leliana’s office. It would be naive to think otherwise due to his privilege and birthright. What he hadn’t anticipated, was how much _he_ would come to return the feeling in full force.

Dorian was no stranger to hate. He hated his father every day. Years of living under its grip had taught him something of its obsessive nature. Hate was, to him, an exhausting emotion reserved for only two sorts of people: those you also love, and those you can’t escape.

Dorian and Fenris were far from escaping each other by the time they reached the Chateau L'été. The castle, with all its magnificently vast white walls only seemed a prison not nearly big enough for the two of them. Five long days and nights stretched ahead on the back of two weeks of Dorian’s personal hell. He was gifted at many things, but dealing with wilderness was not one of them.

At first, on setting out from Skyhold, it had seemed that the worst of Fenris’ animosity was to be expressed with stony silence. He, a skilled rider, kicked off to take the lead, charting the way and leaving Dorian far behind. Dorian wasn’t an outdoors sort of man, and horse riding was a very outdoors sort of thing. When he rode with Trevelyan, the Inquisitor called breaks often, saving Dorian the humiliation of needing to ask. That kindness made the uncomfortable necessity of horse travel bearable for him. At Fenris’ pace however, Dorian struggled with merely keeping the elf within sight. It was all he could do to ride, hounded by the anxiety of falling so far behind that he might loose his way entirely. Catching up, however, just plainly proved out of the realms of possibility. One hour of being jostled in the saddle over steep mountain terrain, and Dorian began to think Fenris would slow to rest any minute. After the second unbroken hour of riding, Dorian could only ease his soreness by standing in the stirrups on every impact. Still, the elf charged his mount down the ridges and valleys at a relentless pace with no sign of letting up.

Five hours; and Dorian’s pride was long forgotten to the grating misery of saddle sores. He’d have demanded rest if he could even get anywhere close to earshot. It seemed instead that the harder he rode his horse, the more Fenris urged his.

 _He’s doing this deliberately_ , Dorian began to think.

Night fell, and _still_ they rode.

Dorian’s eyes strained on the dying embers of sunset, searching to catch glimpses of his guide’s white hair under moonlight far, far off. The distance was broadening, and Dorian’s horse—the older and smaller of the two mounts—was exhausted.

 _The elf’s mount carries what is needed to make camp_ , Dorian knew, shivering as the cold of a deepening valley crept upon him. _This is past cruel. Now it’s dangerous._ Red Templars were not yet completely hunted out, and darkspawn were still sighted roaming the surface. Regardless of that, it was never safe for a Mage to travel by himself. All of this would have spurned him, and yet Dorian and his horse were spent.

‘It hasn’t been your fault.’ Dorian murmured to himself bitterly, looking about in the sudden silence of the valley and clutching the reigns a little tighter. Fenris had long passed this point. ‘There’s no sense dying out here for nothing. It’d be a waste of good looks.’

His horse whinnied as if in relieved agreement, and stilled to a panting stop. Dorian watched her keen ears twitch and turn at every night sound that his own ears were deaf to. ‘We’ll rest some,’ Dorian told her, running his hand down the side of her neck. ‘Then we’ll turn back.’

After minutes of delaying the pain that dismounting would bring, Dorian got it over with. He crumpled to the ground on numb legs, clutching his battered rear. _I’ll never walk properly again,_ he mourned, _and not even for the good sort of reason._

Once his legs had thawed, he began to lead his horse slowly in search of water. Both mage and mount were parched, and in a valley there would be a stream to refill his skins. Maker, what he’d give to fill them with wine instead. He swatted a mosquito on the back of his neck. The creek must have been getting closer. He swatted another of the damn blighters. He very, _very_ _much_ needed wine. These mosquitos were monstrous—he could feel them hit his arms, fat as nugs. What had they been feeding on out here to—

Then Dorian stepped on something soft. It gave under foot, and a stench erupted into the air. He clutched his face and gagged. At his feet, through the dark, he made out something soft, and jelly-like. An arm _squashed_ —and at the shoulder…the rest of it. White. Bloated. Very long dead.

Dorian had certainly found the stream but he wouldn’t be drinking from it. Languishing, half submerged in the water on its banks, was the exceedingly dead remains of an Inquisition soldier.

Two senses overpowered Dorian in that moment. The first was the want to throw up. The second was a reading of the sick, skin-crawling magic that writhed off the corpse.

_Blood magic._

The throwing up urge was his imminent attention, and with ears ringing, Dorian turned and stumbled away from the scene. The feeling slowly ebbed, and his ears sharpened to the vibrations of hoofs on dirt. His horse, on his looking at her, had suddenly become restless. She was backing away and throwing her head, clouds of steam rising from her flaring nostrils. Dorian held up his hand to calm her when she suddenly reared, kicking his arm away and pulling the reigns free, steering to break into a gallop.

He opened his mouth to shout after her, but no sound escaped him.

Wet slime had slid around his neck.

Dripping, soft, swollen flesh.

The remains of hands closed on his throat and wrung. They sealed the thick stench of carrion in his lungs. He couldn’t draw air.

Only sparks.

The entire forest electrified as the charge exploded from every pore of his skin. The spell ripped out of him for as long as he could sustain it, then with a sudden silence, the void of the night pressed back in around him. Dorian spun to stare at the smoking charred body at his feet. _Try and be alive again_ , he dared the corpse. _You fucking try._

Leaves crunched. Dorian’s arm quaked with another strike and he swung it around and—Fenris, reactively aglow with burning blue, caught it and smacked it to the side, where the lighting discharged. It set a tree aflame.

‘You,’ Dorian breathed, first in relief. Then came rage. ‘ _You.’_

‘I was promised you would be useful,’ Fenris said with matched heat, ‘not slow me down—’

He stopped suddenly, and his eyes dropped to the charred remains. He narrowed his eyes. ‘This place stinks of blood magic.’

‘ _Really_?’ Dorian exploded. ‘I hadn’t noticed!’ And then he saw the _best_ part. Fenris looked at him like it was Dorian’s own work. Fenris, with lyrium veins glowing like something beautiful and poisonous. Poised like a heckled up wolf, fangs seconds from tearing a throat.

‘Yes, it was me,’ Dorian scathed. In all of Thedas, a more abhorrent assumption couldn’t have been found to offend him more. ‘I wondered, ‘what could really put the cherry on this splendid day?’ Then I thought; why not reanimate a soup-y corpse to wring my neck! Such _fun.’_

‘Who else is around?’ Fenris growled, spanning his arms to the empty clearing around them.

‘Well,’ Dorian copied Fenris’ gesture with all sweeping mockery. ‘Certainly _not_ my horse.’

 

Riding on the first day had not been uncomfortable, Dorian soon realised. _Uncomfortable_ was riding having to share the one horse they had. Fenris had the reigns, which meant Dorian had nothing to brace himself against when the way was rough except Fenris himself. Dorian could only cling on lest he be thrown off by Fenris’ fast and furious handling, and it didn’t help much in the way of garnering rest either. Dorian would demand they stop, but short of him setting to unbuckling their packs and forcing them to stop to retrieve them, he had no power to force Fenris to pull the reigns.

‘Do it again, mage,’ Fenris warned tightening the strap of one pack he had collected from the roadside, ‘and I’ll leave you behind here and then you may rest as long as you like.’

 

Fourteen long days of this, and Dorian was ready to kiss the marble floor of the chateau when it crested the horizon. On re-entering civilization, the power status immediately shifted. Dorian, the Tevinter Altus, was shown to the baths and after; all the comforts he swore he’d never be torn from again. Fenris, on the other hand—a dirty and travel-worn elf— was excluded of the attentions of anyone. He was left to see to the horse and packs and thereafter; any and every labor his ‘ _master’_ may require for the next five days.

It was Dorian’s turn to call the shots.


	4. IV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nsfw below ;~)

Dorian had slept in a _bed_ , eaten meals made of _food_ (the travel rations he’d lived on for the past fortnight did not qualify) and bathed for half a day. So, it was with his mind fixed on satisfying his primal needs that he met Alander.

It was the first night of the conference—the first of five. The way the Orlesians liked to do it wasn’t unlike in Tevinter. All attended each evening’s ball. By day, one relaxed, took in the sights, and plotted how to best manipulate their new acquaintances into giving them what they wanted. Dorian didn’t end up making it to the following day before he found himself being manipulated, nor did he protest: the man was handsomely blond with southern, masculine features and his eyes were bright with intelligence. He dressed impeccably, spoke well, and everything he did boasted a magnetic confidence. And he would turn out to be—a trivial detail—an apostate mage.

‘I understand you’re here on behalf of the Inquisition,’ the stranger had begun. He’d first locked eyes with Dorian in the vestibule, and had been catching his gaze for the last hour with bold self-assurance.

‘I was wondering if you were ever going to approach me,’ Dorian replied, admiring the man’s broad, tall form, ‘or whether I’d have to go and set you straight.’ 

‘Oh, nobody could ever do that,’ the man quipped quietly with a smile. He meant it to be understood _exactly_ as Dorian’s one-track mind did.

‘That’s something you and I have in common,’ Dorian replied, taking note of the man’s hands. Strong, large. They’d feel good spanning his hips. Dorian knew his mission, but the night had proven fruitless. Nothing outside the realm of dull had happened; there had only been two duels so far, and one poisoning. It was a slow night for Orlais. Dorian prided himself on his work ethic, but after the past fortnight he wasn’t going to turn down a man like this.

‘And you are…?’ he inquired.

The man slipped his hand to the small of Dorian’s back and leaned down, brushing Dorian’s ear with his lips. ‘Are we really going to keep making small talk?’ he growled, impatient desire plain on his voice.

‘I need to know what name to moan,’ Dorian answered, ‘when I’m taking you in the chantry, ten minutes from now.

 

*

 

‘ _Alander,’_ Dorian groaned as his back slammed against a stone wall. The sacred house of worship was abandoned and the candles burned low. They would likely remain alone, but the threat of otherwise…Dorian rubbed his hand down the man’s muscled belly and palmed over his groin. It was gratifying to find that he was literally pinned between a rock and a _very_ hard place. The man let out a groan and pressed his mouth down on Dorian’s collarbone, sucking and nipping his way over Dorian’s shoulder and up to his ear.

‘Undress,’ Alander commanded into it, in a low, wanting voice. ‘Or these robes will be shreds by the time I’m done with you.’

Dorian stripped off his layers, feeling—with a tightening heat in his lower belly—all the sin and pleasure of being unveiled before a complete stranger.

Alander’s eyes wandered his bare skin slowly. Ravenous. His gaze dropped between Dorian’s legs, fixed on where he stood, swollen and flushed. Something about the shameless, carnal hunger in this man’s eyes made Dorian’s blood surge. Under the heat of that transfixed gaze, he swelled to an almost _unbearable_ size and the slick bead of pre-cum on his tip overflowed. Alander bit his lip, watching it gliding down Dorian in one slow drip to his base, and groaned. That sound drew Dorian’s breath from his lungs.

‘You too,’ Dorian panted impatiently, needing to see this man bare.

The man shook his head with a smirk. ‘Someone might come in,’ he said.

‘What,’ Dorian laughed with a hand on his hip, ‘and see you fully dressed, and _me_ on all fours, spread on full display?’

‘I’m glad you get it,’ Alander’s mouth curled in amusement.

‘Well they _do_ say I’m smart,’ Dorian replied. ‘But if dominating me is your object, you’ll find I put up somewhat of a fight.’

‘Good.’ Alander said, coming to stand over him and staring down into his eyes. Dorian was all talk. He already felt the desire to give in—to feel the gap between their bodies close and the pulsing thickness of this man drive inside him. Alander reached out, laced his hand through Dorian’s hair, and suddenly wrenched his head back. He slowly grazed his teeth over Dorian’s exposed throat, building his hot, exquisite frustration to near _agonizing_.

‘I am going to make you pray to the Maker,’ the man promised. ‘And when I’ve had my way with you, Dorian, you’re going to need to beg for His mercy.’

 

It was hours later, in the deep quiet of the night. Dorian lay gasping for breath on his back, spent. He was tied down to the central alter with his legs spread wide, throbbing with the contented ache of having been completely and utterly claimed.

 _I’ll have to thank Leliana,_ he thought in his daze, _for referring me to the most sacrilegious fuck I’ve ever had._ He imagined Cassandra’s face if she could only see him now, and snorted. Alander let out a low breathless laugh too, from down on the floor with his back leaning against the alter.

‘That was…’ the man laughed breathlessly again, letting out a sudden euphoric shout that echoed through the chantry.

‘Is it just me,’ Dorian said, inspecting the knots that tied his hands and feet down, ‘or have you done this quite a lot before? Tying unsuspecting men down to alters and sucking half their life out of them, that is. What did you say you do?’

‘I didn’t,’ Alander said wiping sweat from his handsome brow.

‘Ah,’ Dorian said. ‘So you’re an apostate.’

‘And if I am?’ he said, confidence no less diminished.

‘Then I’d better not offend you lest you leave me tied here for morning parishioners. That’s not part of your fantasy I hope.’

Alander climbed slowly to his feet and pulled a dagger from his boot, slicing through the ropes and freeing his object.

‘How do I look?’ he asked, clearly with thoughts already on returning to the outside world, having done with Dorian.

‘Terrible,’ Dorian answered, considering him. ‘You’d better fix your…everything before you expect to be seen today. And me?’

‘Forget your clothes.’ Alander replied, looking him over again. ‘You should go out like that.’ 

 

*

 

When Dorian made to attend the breakfast banquet after all the necessary grooming to make himself respectable again, he was faced with the unsavory reality that was Fenris.

‘Having fun?’ the elf growled under his breath, seemingly coming out of no-where and jerking Dorian by the sleeve away from sight into…

It was a cheese cellar.

Dorian wrinkled his nose and watched with satisfaction as Fenris regretted his choice, eyeing the wheels as if to warn them off. The cheese persisted.

‘While you’ve been… _sitting in the lap_ ofluxury,’ Fenris sneered in distaste, ‘I’ve been working. Look.’ He thrust a piece of parchment to Dorian.

On it was a series of strange, simplistic, child-like hand drawings.

‘Oh it’s _lovely_ ,’ Dorian jeered, holding it up in the air before him for critique. ‘I didn’t know you were such an artist. I’ll get the Inquisitor to frame it and hang it up in the throne room.’

‘Do not mock me, mage,’ Fenris snatched the parchment back. ‘These pictographs are a code I’m not surprised that you are completely ignorant of. It is the Tevinter language of slaves, who are otherwise forbidden from reading or writing. It is designed to evade the attentions of the ruling classes. These symbols have been appearing and vanishing all through the servant’s quarters since I have arrived. Orlesian slaves do not communicate in this way. It is a means of covert communication.’

Dorian folded his arms across his chest. He had to admit, it was souring for Fenris to find a lead while Dorian was still empty handed.

‘So what does it say?’ he asked, careful not to sound at all impressed.

‘The language is regionally varied.’ Fenris said. ‘It is unfamiliar to me but I will be able to decipher it, given time.’

‘How much time will you take?’ Dorian said, unable to stand the stench of cheese any longer and grasping for the door. ‘We may not _have_ time.’

‘Certainly not, when I am hounded all day as a slave by everyone and anyone,’ the elf snapped bitterly. ‘A _clever_ idea from your Inquisitor.’

Dorian stopped dead and spun around.

‘ _Don’t,’_ he hissed. ‘Vilify me, but you will _not_ vilify my Inquisitor’. The room dropped ten degrees and ice crystals crusted Dorian’s fingertips. ‘He is worth a hundred times you and I both. He spared your life on the night you came to Skyhold. _Never_ forget that.’

‘Life?’ Fenris sneered. ‘A fine life he spared me. Here I am, ordered to relive my slavery, complete with a _Tevinter Magister_ as a watchdog. Of course to you, it must seems like the utmost generosity to be bestowed upon the likes of me _.’_

Dorian narrowed his eyes. ‘Slavery isn’t nice and cute,’ he snapped. ‘I don’t pretend that. But you can’t tell me it’s worse than death. Even you can’t be so childish and simple as to tell me it’s worse in Tevinter than here in the south, where slums groan with starvation and poverty.’

‘Of course I can’t tell you,’ Fenris said, beginning to glow. His next words come clear, sharp, and slow. ‘Your kind hear whatever they want. They _do_ whatever they want. They take _whatever_ they want. You know and care for _nothing_ _else_.’

Fenris stalked past Dorian and made to take his leave down the hallway, but Dorian could not abide it.

‘ _Fenris_!’

His voice echoed, drawing the stares of lords and ladies. If Dorian were to be maligned, he’d at least derive satisfaction from it. If the elf was so determined to make a master out of Dorian, then he’d make a slave out of Fenris.

‘ _Stop.’_

Fenris twitched. He glanced to his left and his right at the watching nobles. He very slowly, unwillingly, slowed his march to a stop.

‘ _Turn.’_

Fenris clenched his fist and slowly turned on his heel. He fixed Dorian with a stare. The most hateful stare that Dorian ever saw.

‘Come back here.’ Dorian commanded.

Under the watch of many now, and obligated to maintain his cover, Fenris took one slow, reluctant step to Dorian. He stopped; his will still refusing to bend completely. His lyrium scars begun to glow a deadly warning.

What Dorian said next, he _knew_ was beneath him.

 

‘ _Come to your Master_.’

 

Fenris obeyed.

He came and stopped before Dorian, staring up at him through his hair. Unguarded murder burned in his wild eyes.

 _Seven days of suffering you_ , Dorian thought. _You can suffer me for once._ Pushing down the blooming guilt in his mind, he said, ‘I will have a glass of wine.’

Fenris obeyed his order, and when he brought it, Dorian dismissed him, satisfied with having made his point. When he entered to breakfast, he tipped out the wine on the foot of a palm plant. He’d seen the intent in Fenris’s eyes.

Dorian didn’t fancy getting poisoned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to my two hardworking betas Tasha and Anna. One who thought the smut was hot, the other who advised me to seek help ;) Also thanks to Sorb and Amelia for helping me fix up a few issues with my last chapter!
> 
> As a former extremely shy member of the internet, I just wanted to gently welcome anyone to drop me a line or leave any thoughts. I welcome any feedback be it hard-hitting crit or simply chat. <3


	5. V

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge love going out for:  
> 1\. My dedicated Beta Anna, who drops everything for me!  
> 2\. All the beautiful souls who left me wonderful feedback and encouragement on chapter 4. Someone better call heaven 'cause they're missing some angels! ;~)
> 
> Note: This chapter contains a threat of rape so please read at your discretion!

Dorian knew he had gone too far once he had calmed down. At his worst he was catty and jealous, delicate and mercurial, but he loathed the thought of ever being cruel.

He’d lost his head, still drunk and sleepless from the affairs of the night. He should have known better. The elf was callous and twisted, that was undeniable, but Dorian had glimpsed the past that had made him that way. There had never been any hint of recognition in Fenris’s eyes to suggest he remembered Dorian in kind, and why should he? They’d met once, so long ago, and there had been nothing to set Dorian apart from the thousands of faces Fenris had seen over the years in Tevinter. Dorian was just another amongst the enemy. Now Dorian regretted that fleeting moment in the corridor, where he had become exactly the villain Fenris thought he was. He hated the elf, he _hated_ him. But Dorian knew he should have done better. 

Dorian wasn’t the only one with Fenris on his mind apparently. At seven that evening, an hour before the ball was to start, an invitation came from Alander.

_‘I must discuss a matter of high confidence with you concerning the Inquisition. Come to my room, and bring your intriguing elf.’_

Dorian sent for Fenris, who emerged from the servants’ quarters, wiping his brow and catching his breath. He had rolled up his sleeves, which stretched over his biceps. Veins rippled over the muscle of his forearms, raised from exertion. His tunic was slicked to his form by sweat from hours of hard, physical labor. Dorian couldn’t help but see the elf’s every contour—the muscle of his chest; the hard plane of his abdomen…the jut of his slim hips…

‘Never seen hard work, mage?’ Fenris assumed. His voice bristled with undiminished rage.

Dorian shifted and focused his attention to the note. He read it aloud. Fenris listened, with arms folded across his still heaving chest.

‘And?’ he said, arching an eyebrow at Dorian.

‘Foolish me; under the impression you’d think it worth investigating.’ Dorian sniffed. ‘Are you coming?’

 

*

 

‘Fascinating,’ Alander said as he received them, fixing his eyes on Fenris. ‘This is quite incredible work. These marks— _Lyrium_?’ He turned to Dorian with intense, hungry wonder. ‘ _How did you make them_?’

 

Dorian had felt ill standing outside Alander’s room, his hand raised to knock and paralyzed by anxiety. It was an incredible night they’d shared together. Of sex. Of only sex. Alander had expressed no desire to see Dorian again, and Dorian hadn’t asked.

He’d learnt never to ask.

But the apostate’s handsome face, the way he moved, the relaxed control which seemed to radiate from him… Maker he was _spellbinding_. When the note had come, Dorian had hated the part of him that searched it for some hidden promise. His niggling hopes were, as expected, unfounded. It was business, he told himself. And moreover: as Fenris had rightly said on the way there, it was suspicious.

Dorian needn’t have worried. The sickening _schoolboy-with-a-crush_ anxiety died as he watched Alander pace around Fenris. It was replaced with a new sort of nausea as the apostate raked his eyes over the elf’s brands: he wasn’t seeing a person.

He saw property.

 _Of course,_ Dorian thought in revulsion. He thinks _I_ did this blood magic. Everyone must. They’d see Fenris’ scars and look to his ‘Master’. Why hadn’t Dorian already considered that? And now, here was Alander showing a side of himself that he thought was safe in the company of a monster. A side, which—although Dorian did not want to see more of it— was certainly was a side worth investigating.

‘You have a handsome slave.’ Alander said, pouring himself a glass of wine, and holding a second out to Dorian. ‘I’ve heard about what men do with handsome slaves in Tevinter.’

 _The way he’d tied me down_ , Dorian suddenly recalled, his body suddenly remembering the roughness that now seemed to take on new meaning.

Dorian forced himself to smile. ‘We aren’t _in_ Tevinter.’ he said quietly. This was a dangerous tipping point. He could play along to his advantage, but could Fenris?

The elf had not broken his character in retaliation so far...

‘I wouldn’t mind taking a better look at your work.’ The apostate said, fingering the collar of Fenris’s shirt. His lustful gaze was no longer considering just the elf’s markings.

The world’s best actor couldn’t play as convincing a slave as Fenris. He stood in complete detached docility. Eyes fixed on the ground.

_Hadn’t Dorian seen that look once before, long ago?_

Realisation fell like a knife.

Fenris wasn’t acting _._

The humiliation—the _threat_ had already gone too far. His eyes were fixed to the ground, vacant and glazed, as though remembering something old and buried. He was reliving it.

‘Unfortunately he has other duties to attend to,’ Dorian asserted, moving to put himself between Alander and Fenris, senses fixing on the elf behind him—hyperaware of his breathing, trying to read him without being able to see him. Dorian’s hate was put on hold for the moment. As much as he detested Fenris, he would _not_ allow him to suffer like this. ‘You’ll have to make do with just me, I’m afraid.’ Dorian said to Alander. Dorian was used to feeling one thing and acting another. He maintained his character and assumed a smirk. ‘That is, provided I am _enough_ for you.’

‘I didn’t peg you as the jealous sort,’ Alander dismissed, eyes slipping from Dorian back on Fenris.

‘You may find I can be exceedingly dramatic,’ Dorian smiled and silently added, _if you touch him one more time._ ‘Go, Fenris. You have much to do.’   

Fenris didn’t hesitate to take Dorian’s out, and taking a wide birth of both Dorian and Alander, made for the door. Without so much as a backward glance, he was gone.

‘I understood there was a matter we were here to discuss,’ Dorian began, steering away from the precipice of sex. He felt some relief having negotiated for Fenris, but now had to turn attentions on his own situation. ‘You wished to raise a matter of some sensitivity concerning the Inquisition?’

‘All business, Dorian?’ Alander raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ve struck a nerve.’

‘You’ve struck an interest,’ Dorian corrected. He’d do anything to play Trevelyan’s spy, but he prayed he would not need to give himself to this man’s lusts just for the sake of maintaining his cover.

‘Then to talk.’ Alander conceded to Dorian’s relief. ‘I have come to this place, you have deduced I’m sure, undertaking a great risk.’

‘Naturally, being an apostate.’ Dorian agreed. ‘You must have quite the reason.’

‘I do not operate alone. I have people, hidden in a location I will not disclose, that like I, resist the Chantry’s cruel confinements. My mission was on their behalf, to beg an audience with the Inquisitor, who we understood likely to be here.’

‘He is a popular man, ruling half the continent and all that.’ Dorian said. ‘I am assigned to represent him in his absence. What is it you wished to discuss?’

‘Asylum,’ the apostate said. ‘In return for our services. We wish to join your ranks. It _was_ my hopes to meet the Inquisitor himself, but perhaps…’ He looked at Dorian. ‘I have been given better fortune in having you. _You_ must hold far greater sympathy for our plight.’

‘Because I’m a mage?’ Dorian clarified.

Alander smirked. ‘Acting coy like there are ears in the wall, Dorian? There aren’t. I’ve checked.’

_Acting coy about what?_

‘Living in hiding is hard,’ Alander said as if it took some restraint. He turned away and walked the length of the room slowly. ‘There is not much to eat or burn for warmth in the wastes where we have been driven. Sometimes the only resource we have is ourselves.’ He turned back and locked darkened eyes with Dorian. ‘Our blood.’

‘You’re a blood mage,’ Dorian realised. He took a step back in shock. There it was. ‘What possesses you to think the Inquisition would ever use blood magic?’

‘They use _you,’_ Alander frowned. _The Tevinter. Fenris’s markings._

Dorian shuddered. ‘You’ve made quite the wrong assumption about me,’ he asserted sharply. _Everyone did._ A cult of blood mages was something Leliana would want to follow up, but didn’t rate as the sort of threat Dorian had been assigned to unearth. He wasn’t here to merely expose an idiot’s idealism.

Alander shook his head, coming to stand before Dorian. ‘Don’t tell me that _you_ , who hails from the Tevinter Imperium, has adopted the South’s simpleminded condemnation. Blood magic is the ancient right and primal tool of man. It has its abuses same as anything, but it has overwhelming value that cannot continue to be ignored.’

‘I see what this is.’ Dorian shook his head, fast losing his calm. ‘You’re an Imperium _fetishist_. You think the Magisters have got it right.’

‘I believe the Inquisition will be the super power needed to ensure Thedas doesn’t tear itself apart,’ Alander corrected and brought his fist down into his palm. ‘And I believe blood magic is the only tool that can do it.’

‘ _Vishante Kaffas._ You naive _fool,’_ Dorian swore, losing his temper completely. ‘If you can’t beat them, join them, and if they won’t have you, _make_ _them_ , is that it? You wonder why mages are locked up and apostates starve, and then preach to me about blood magic and power. Your ideals pervert the very idea of what the Inquisition stands for. You wanted the Inquisition’s answer and I can give it to you: _No. Not ever. Not in a world that is free._ ’

With that, he stormed out.

 

*

 

Dorian was in a foul mood for the rest of the evening’s ball, and playing the game was a trial. The smiling. The flattery. The emptiness.

The emptiness.

He had a job to do and he’d keep himself from incurring any more bitter disappointments from handsome strangers. Fenris couldn’t be found anywhere, though Dorian doubted his discovery of a lunatic was all that necessary (or desirable) to share.

 _Really,_ Dorian told himself, _the fact the man happened to have a length of rope on his person, with which to tie you up, should have raised a red flag._ But at the time…to feel _desired_. It had just been so good. So needed. To Dorian’s shame now, so desperately needed.

 

* 

 

It was late—well past midnight when he returned to his room, having made some appointments for further inquiry on the morrow but still having no real leads. He rounded the corner to his door, and there, leaning on the wall waiting for him, was Alander.

‘What do you want now?’ Dorian sighed, burnt out. ‘You have my answer.’

The apostate looked about him—they were alone to Dorian’s eye— and he suddenly straightened from leaning, seized Dorian by the shoulders, and slammed his back to the wall.

‘Act like you’re kissing me,’ Alander whispered, bringing his head down close and brushing his lips to Dorian’s ear. ‘I’ve just gained intelligence on a plot that means to endanger your Inquisitor.’

Dorian’s body betrayed him, responding to the touch of it’s own accord. Heating. Hardening. His heart thudded with adrenaline.

‘What is it?’ he hissed back, trying to ignore the thick musky scent of Alander’s neck and hair. The physical memory of his hands pressing down on Dorian’s throat. His hips fitting between Dorian’s legs and spreading him wide. _Trevelyan_ , Dorian focused himself. _The Inquisitor is in danger._

‘I can only show you,’ Alander breathed against Dorian’s neck. ‘but we must go now.’ He pulled away and strode down the corridor. Dorian watched him go in frozen indecision. He thought of finding Fenris but—No.

If the Inquisitor’s life truly was in peril Dorian wouldn’t waste time.

He followed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dorian didn't you mother warn you about going off with strange men???  
> Next chap is a cracker, can't wait to share it guys!


	6. VI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Gave chapter 1 a facelift/edit, including some ART! Go take a peek. :)  
> 2\. Every comment you guys left me on my last chapter reduces me to gross sobbing and got me through a less-than-great week, thank you all so much!!  
> 3\. Special shout out to my beta Anna, who cackled with glee as she tore me apart on this chapter (the details of which you can enjoy in the footnotes) but who helped me make it 1 billion times better.

 

 

They walked under moonlight: two mages in silence taking careful pains to avoid detection. Dorian didn’t know why. Alander lead the way, keeping to the shadows and ever watchfully scanning the grounds. Dorian kept silent, reminding himself of the importance in sometimes taking things on faith.

The Chateau’s grounds were exceedingly vast and grew wilder the further they walked. Once its stones were long behind them, shrunk against the pale moon, Dorian was certain there was no chance of their being overheard and broke his silence.

‘If you’d like to finally tell me what we’re doing out here, I’m sure your secret will be safe with the nugs,’ he said, skirting around one of the little monsters which was trying its damned best to get underfoot.

Alander only shook his head. ‘You’ll know soon enough.’ He promised. ‘We aren’t far.’

But that had been a lie. Some thirty more minutes of walking, and Dorian was on edge. With every step, his mind strained to conceive some sensible reason for what they could be doing out here. Instead, he was proving remarkably better at thinking up horrific scenarios. Dorian dredged up a memory he hadn’t thought about in years. In Tevinter, when he’d been a boy, his mother had always kept him close on any venture outside their estate. He’d always been made to hold her hand and that had been _not for negotiation_ , even long into years where he had been too old to be still tied to his mother’s apron strings. There were always stories of course— precious family heirs being kidnapped for ransom or worse, never to be seen again—but that was all they had ever been; stories. Until one day, they weren’t. His parents had had friends with their own boy. He was Dorian’s age, but terribly slow and consequently his nature was placid and trusting. He had gone with his parents to Minrathos and had been taken out by the servants to see the sites. He never came home.

They’d found him weeks later, floating face down in an aqueduct some leagues from the city. How he’d ended up there and who had done it remained unsolved to this day, but the marks on his lifeless body divulged more of what had transpired than a sheltered ten-year-old Dorian had understood at the time.

‘ _There are bad men in this world, Dorian’_ , his father had sat him down to explain on the night following of boy’s discovery. _‘Men, without a heart like yours, who will hunt others as prey.’_

 

 _Go back,_ Dorian’s senses told him, feeling his shirt stick to his back in a sudden cold sweat. He looked behind him to locate the way, and his stomach clenched like a fist. The Chateau d’Ete, his only marker, was completely lost from view. It was obscured by the woodland, which had been thickening so steadily that Dorian hadn’t noticed. Now he was sobered by how closely the trees grew, and how lost he actually was. He’d lost his bearings entirely.

_If I try to go back, how will I find my way?_

The path itself was hard enough to find, as moonlight seldom broke through the thick forest canopy. Dorian felt his way, stumbling and tripping on tree roots. Added to that, the night air was dropping its temperature fast, and Dorian hadn’t dressed for adventuring. He certainly wasn’t dressed the part for getting lost in the woods for days. _Was his only option to continue to follow? Where were they going? What other soul could be out here?_

‘I think you’ve let me stumble along blind for long enough, Alander’, Dorian announced, voice coming sharp and quavering. ‘If you’ve quite done your dash with being dark and mysterious, I’ll have you reveal your intents before you lead me further’.

Alander seemed as if he was going to ignore that, but then slowed to a stop and looked over his shoulder at Dorian. His face was obscured in shadow. His brow cast shadows over his eyes—two black depths, filling the pits of his skull.

‘No matter’, he said, voice calm and without emotion. ‘We’re here.’

He raised his hand to the darkness. At first Dorian thought it was to silence him. Then shadows crept into the edges of Dorian’s vision. He whipped his head around to make out a circle of robed mages emerging from the trees.

‘Friends of yours?’ Dorian asked, twisting his head to pinpoint all of them as they closed in. He wished the fear in his voice wasn’t so audible. He wished he hadn’t been so damned naïve as to march into danger without a soul in Thedas being wise of it. He wished he’d told Fenris.

‘It’d be too much to hope that the only ritual we’ll be having tonight is midnight supper on the grass, I suppose?’ Dorian ventured, spotting the ancient cracked stone alter, half swallowed up by the expansion of ancient tree trunks. It had been wetted with animal sacrifices and encircled with an arrangement of bones.

Dorian’s breath stalled. The pit of his stomach felt suddenly full of ice. It felt as if his entire body was a sheet of glass and it was shattering. Dorian tried running. He spun on his heel and sprintedforhis _life._ It didn’t work. He didn’t even clear the circle before they were on him, grinding him into the ground. Dorian kicked, and choked on dirt and decaying leaves, and shouted at the top of his lungs, but he knew it was for nothing.

‘ _Why this_?’ he yelled at Alander as they pulled him to his feet, nearly tearing his shoulders from socket. He fought back tears. ‘What are you going to make me? A sacrifice? An abomination? Where is your _fucking_ morality you prick _?’_

They dragged him to the stone and held him down on it. His each limb was gripped by a man, crushed to the alter with a combined strength that was undefeatable. Dorian couldn’t wipe his tears away nor the mud from his face, and he couldn’t catch his breath between each fast and shallow gasp. Alander bent over him, looking in his face and frowning slightly.

‘It’s a shame, Dorian,’ he said. ‘It really is. I’d have liked things to have worked out the way that I proposed earlier this evening, but you gave your answer. At least we had fun.’

Dorian spat at him. ‘ _Fuck_ you.’

‘You already have,’ Alander said, and wiped the spit from his face with a finger. He bent out of Dorian’s view and for those seconds, the panic overwhelmed Dorian and brought bile to his throat. The blood mage returned, drawing a long knife into view.

 _Not this,_ Dorian prayed. _Not this._

_*_

When the Inquisitor had walked in the fade at Adamant and lived to tell the tale, Dorian had wanted to know everything.

‘ _Everything_?’ Trevelyan had asked, and Dorian could see there was something there.

‘It told me something about you,’ the Inquisitor confessed with a sidelong look, giving into Dorian’s eager entreaties. ‘Your greatest fear. Why _temptation_?’

 

It had taken Dorian a very long time before he was ready to answer that.

 

‘If temptation wins it would be because I was weak.’ he had admitted one day, to Trevelyan, and only to Trevelyan. ‘It would be because I _let_ it. It would be because I did what was easy. Because I failed what was _right_.

‘All Magisters—all Tevinter—are temptation’s slaves. My father was the last exception…then he fell to the temptation of blood magic—“the resort of the weak mind” he called it. It destroyed him. _It nearly destroyed me, too._ If I can’t prove it can be resisted—If I can’t prove there is hope for Tevinter—If temptation claims _me_ …then it will finish the job it started.’

 

*

 

Dorian saw his fate reflected in the blade. _Temptation_ had come to claim him at last.

 

Eleven figures enshrouded in shadow surrounded him. He couldn’t see their faces. He couldn’t see anything human about them at all. Alander began to chant in what Dorian slowly realized was terribly enunciated Tevene. The rest responded in kind, further garbling the tongue.

‘Just kill me _now’_ , Dorian moaned, wishing he could at least cover his ears, but missed the sound as soon as it stopped, for what followed it—

Alander raised the knife above his own hand. He closed his fist around the blade and drew it, splattering his blood down on Dorian. He held it out to the next man, who did the same, and passed it to the next. Dorian, at war with himself, couldn’t decide if he wanted to turn his head away and screw his eyes shut, or crane his neck to keep the blade in sight.

He could taste blood seeping between his lips. His blood, theirs.

The blade, having come full circle, returned to Alander. He took it up again and nodded to the man who held Dorian’s arm. The man took hold of Dorian’s sleeve and wrenched it back to expose his skin. A new and blinding panic gripped Dorian.

‘Don’t—‘, he gasped, seeing the knife turn on him through the tears in his eyes. A shallow slice across his palm wouldn’t be what they had in mind for him. Dorian didn’t care if he sounded pathetic now. ‘Anything but this—Stop! _Please_ —‘

The knife came down and sank into his wrist. Dorian threw back his head and his entire existence imploded into that agony.

Blood poured.

The knife began to drag from wrist to index finger. Flesh split open and the lining between reality and dreams ripped around him. The Fade surged in, filling him. From out of it, leeching deep into his shell, spoke a voice.

 

_This time._

It was a _promise_ , roiling from the depths of his deepest fears. Agony and terror; the Fade was a parasite, taking his body and leaving no room for his mind and—

 

*

  

Millions of stars came into focus. The night sky.

Had he dreamed of men screaming just now? Or had it been from his own aching throat?

A soft light dusted over him. A blue incandescence. 

‘Mage,’ growled a deep voice. A familiar voice. ‘The realms of your idiocy have far exceeded my expectations.’ An _annoying_ voice.

Something was tugging on his hand, and Dorian turned his head weakly. An elf bent over him, face swimming into view. Lines of magic coloured him sapphire. A light in the dark. The moon shone down in a single beam that casting a halo of fine silver hairs about his head.

‘Fenris?’ Dorian recalled. Memory was flooding back now. Another tug at his hand, and Dorian realised it was a tourniquet being tightened.

Dorian tried to sit up. He pressed his ruined hand to his chest protectively, and with his other, tried to find some purchase against the slippery blood-soaked alter. Fenris stood back, waiting, his arms folded across his chest. In the dark they looked black up to his elbows, and Dorian realised they were stained with blood.

Dorian pushed himself upright at last, the exertion causing a groan to escape him between his sharp, shallow pants, and dizziness threatening to undo his efforts.

Then he saw the corpses strewn on the forest floor.

When those men had held Dorian down upon the alter, their grip had felt like iron, and he was by no measure an insubstantial man. Now he was looking at Fenris, lithe, almost _delicate_ , yet standing up to his ankles in bodies. There was only a scratch on his cheek, as if he were a boy who’d been merely roughhousing with a brother.

‘What—’ Dorian’s voice tremored as he tried to fit it all together. ‘—but _how_ are you here? How did you _know_?’

‘The pictograms in the servant’s quarters,’ Fenris said. ‘I translated them. You’ve independently discovered the same cult they revealed to me.’ Dorian considered the irony: Fenris had been charged as the reckless one; and Dorian the babysitter.

‘I think I like your methods better.’ Dorian confessed, barely sentient through his pain. ‘What did it say? Come along to an old fashioned bleeding? Fun for the whole family?’

‘More or less.’ Fenris answered. ‘I decoded their plans for this ritual but an hour ago.’ He looked about him in contempt, and hissed, ‘ _why is it always blood magic?_ When I couldn’t find you in The Chateau, I came here. I _was_ hoping to find you sacrificed. A shame.’

This splitting pain made Dorian wish so too.

‘Sorry to disappoint.’ he murmured, his heart not in the banter.

‘This one I left alive for interrogation.’ Fenris said, and then kicked someone at his feet with gusto. Dorian looked down to see Alander on the ground, stirring into consciousness.

Fenris dropped to one knee, seizing the mage by his hair and wrenching his head up.

‘I’d have relished ripping out your heart, blood mage,’ Fenris snarled to him through bared teeth, ‘but this way, I’ll sleep easier knowing _you_ may enjoy a taste of being someone’s prisoner.’

‘We’re all prisoners,’ the man spat. ‘Of fear.’

Fenris rolled his eyes and smashed the man’s head into the ground, stilling him once more.

‘The mission is done,’ the elf said, standing. ‘I alerted the Chateau guard as I left. They are on their way and will hold the captive. I’ll send word to Skyhold and await further instruction.’

‘I’ll defer to your lead.’ Dorian said, holding his head and trying not to be sick.

He should have felt relieved. He was alive, wasn’t he? Hadn’t they completed their mission?

So why did Dorian _know_ that it wasn’t nearly over?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to share with you guys the very serious editing process that Anna and I go through to bring you this fic. (I'm so sorry. Mostly for this trash but also for grainy small bad quality)
> 
>  


	7. VII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for being so patient, I hope you're all still out there! Enjoy the chap~  
> (I also hope you guys know you signed up for Dorian-torture wangst because I'm sorry I was just made this way)

Dorian knew he had not walked away from the blood magic untouched.

Fenris had prevented the ritual from reaching its completion, he kept reminding himself. And yet…Dorian understood magic instinctively, and he knew…

_He was changed._

He kept it to himself. It was only his wrecked nerves. He only needed time to recover.

Surely. 

 

It was well into daylight, and now the third day of five, before Dorian’s hand had finished being sutured. He collapsed into his bed at last, carried off by a draught of poppy into a sleep so deep that he tumbled through the fade for what felt like eternity. Dorian walked through an endless and empty city of graves, spirit exhausted and only longing for dreamless rest. He searched for a door that could take him back to his drugged body and into consciousness, but every one he conjured only opened into another endless stretch of wasteland.

He was lost within The Grand Necropolis, city of the dead, and every stone read the same thing:

 _Dorian Pavus_.

The graves under feet grew cracked and lumped with knotted roots of trees long since hacked down. The stones pressed in around him as he walked on, growing taller and closer, blocking out what little eerie unnatural light there was. Dorian made to turn back, but there was nowhere to turn. Behind him rose a smooth wall of black marble. Dorian whipped his head forward, and the endless horizon had vanished in place of another stone. In its surface flickered the reflection of one million burning candles. Candles that didn’t exist. Every way Dorian whipped his head, there was no forward. Every stone he turned his back to crept closer, unseen, until he couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe—

 

_This time._

There was an explosion. Dorian came to, upright and tangled in his sheets, with his hands out in front of him. They were smoking, and at the other end of the room…There was a wall tapestry up in flames.

 _‘Vishante Kaffas_ Dorian!’ he hissed, leaping out of bed and dousing the flames with the water from his basin. The flames hissed into nothingness. He stood staring at the ruined tapestry, mortified. Setting things accidentally alight was something you just grew out of, like wetting the bed. He hadn’t lost control on his magic like that in nearly thirty years.

Outside, it was dark again. Unsure of the time, he washed and dressed, wincing with each movement of his injured hand, and went in search of Fenris for any updates on their situation.

 

Dorian caught first sight of Fenris from one length of the vestibule and watched him. The elf wasn’t dressed in servant’s robes anymore. With their task done, neither Dorian nor Fenris had an obligation to maintain their cover. Fenris had donned his leathers under a dress tunic, looking out of place as both a warrior and a guest. He stood apart from everyone, perched on one step to see over the crowd, evidently watchful for his colleague. Their eyes locked, and both began to make their way towards the other in silent consensus.

‘Elf. Bring us more wine,’ Dorian saw a man shout at Fenris when he passed a boisterous party. Fenris’s head twitched a little at the order, but he continued his strides in dignified silence. 

The man was with new friends and acquaintances, and accepting that snub was evidently a humiliation not to be borne in their presence. He stood, and swayed, face incandescently red. To classify him as drunk would be like Dorian saying that the horrible little human-like hands that nugs possessed were merely _unsettling_. The drunk got to his feet and hounded Fenris, again repeating his order with doubled demand.

‘I am not your servant.’ Fenris growled without turning. ‘Bother someone else.’

‘Come back to the table,’ one of the man’s friends implored, embarrassed for him.

Dorian could see the man wasn’t going to give up, and pushed past the crowd now, nearly at the scene. The drunk suddenly reached out and seized Fenris’s shoulder, jerking him around and digging his fingers into the elf’s flesh cruelly.

Fenris cringed in pain, and began to flicker blue.

‘I _said,’_ the drunk repeated—

Dorian punched him.

There was a crunch. The man’s face, or Dorian’s knuckles. Maybe both. The crowd parted and the man crashed down onto his arse, clutching his mouth and swearing in Orlesian. Onlookers craned their necks to see if it was anything particularly interesting.

Dorian and Fenris, like schoolyard boys who knew it was time to hightail it, both turned in unison and assimilated into the crowd, breaking out on the other side and turning down a quiet corridor.

 

‘What was _that_?’ Fenris demanded when they were alone.

‘I’m here to stop you from doing anything brash,’ Dorian bristled, not exactly sure himself, and shaking out a hand which was now nearly as useless as the other. ‘They didn’t say anything about _me_.’

Fenris stared at him for a moment, and Dorian couldn’t begin to read what he was thinking. Then the elf reached into a pocket and unfurled a parchment. ‘A raven came,’ Fenris said shortly, turning talk onto business. ‘A reply from Skyhold:’

 

_“See out the conference, await further instruction. Reinforcement is on way to take the prisoner. Nightingale.”_

 

Dorian watched Fenris as he read. The elf enunciated the message with a brow furrowed in concentration. Every word was careful, slow, and hesitant, as if he was putting the words together in an unfamiliar language. Of course: slaves were forbidden to read in the Imperium. It must have been Hawke who had taught him.

What had the two of them had together? Something well beyond the realms of Dorian’s experience.

For a moment, he envied it deeper than he’d envied anything. But then—to never know it was one thing. However, to have it, and then to have that ripped away...

It was the first time that Dorian had really looked at Fenris and tried to see past the scowl on his face and the aggression in his stance. He was not much shorter than Dorian, but the lines of his body were so unlike. He was fine in build—graceful even. Yes, that was undeniable. Looking at him was strange. He was well muscled beneath his clothes—there was unmistakably strength there…and yet…

Fragility too. His entire body was tense, wound like a spring, ready to lash out in a moment of need. He was ever watchful, eyes always scanning his surroundings. Always on edge, like a wary dog that had known a cruel master. _Yes_ , Dorian suddenly appreciated, feeling his stomach clench. _Exactly_ like that.

‘Why do you stare mage,’ Fenris growled, shifting under Dorian’s gaze. ‘Does my literacy amuse you?’

‘You killed _nine_ men and saved me from a fate worse than death.’ Dorian shook his head in sudden surging admiration. ‘You’re incredible.’

‘I—’ Fenris faltered, trying to find the sting. ‘Yes.’ He agreed uncertainly, still looking for the trap.

‘Having trouble filing that into your _insults from the mage_ archive?’ Dorian suggested.

‘…Yes,’ Fenris repeated stiffly again. The answer had seemed to work for Fenris the first time and perhaps he wasn’t ready to take a risk on anything else.

‘Thank you’, Dorian said, sure to look at Fenris and not his own feet, which was tempting. ‘If you hadn’t come, then I…’

‘It was my job’, Fenris cut across. Then as if on second consideration, he looked down at the markings on his arms. ‘No one should suffer blood magic. Not even you’.

‘Look at us: having a moment,’ Dorian smirked. ‘I’m going to leave now before we say something awful to one another. Do try to take my words as they’re meant.’

‘You’re a damn fool, mage _._ ’ Fenris burst out after him, as if in a panic of a conversation being done without animosity.

‘And you’re a _nefarious fiend_ ,’ Dorian returned dramatically, not meaning it as much as he once would have. Not meaning it nearly as much.

 

*

 

Dorian didn’t sleep that night. He didn’t do anything but sit in his room with his knees to his chest, staring out his window. He saw the sun crack the sky red and open up day four. He hadn’t ventured from within his room all day. He didn’t attend the ball. Time barely seemed to pass. He only realized how long it had been when he was watching the sun dip below the horizon once more. Time rolled deep into the hours of evening, and still, sleep would not come.

There was something rotting inside.

 _Corruption_.

 

Dorian didn’t know when he first accepted that it was pulsing through his veins. He just knew it was getting worse. His body was beaded with sweat and heavy with weakness.

He was terrified. 

 

*

 

‘What did you do to me?’ Dorian panted, holding himself upright against the bars of a prison, deep in the dungeons under the chateau.

Alander wasn’t sleeping either. His body was swallowed in shadows, but for his face: it was lit by flickering flames and burning with satisfaction. He closed his eyes.

‘So it wasn’t for _nothing,’_ he murmured.

‘This voice,’ Dorian said, shivering. ‘In my head. You put it there. What is it?’

‘Fear,’ he answered. ‘Your worst nightmare, Dorian. Something your Inquisitor has met in the past.’

_Adamant. The Fade. The Nightmare that had claimed the Champion of Kirkwall._

‘The Inquisitor and Hawke destroyed it,’ Dorian said, and Alander shook his head with a broken hack of a laugh.

‘They didn’t destroy it. It survived, but only just. It heard our calls from deep in the wilderness and crawled to us, voracious. My people suckled it with our struggle. It became our baby, and it understood us. We _raised_ it, and now it brings its vengeance, and ours too. Our cause is common. Tell me, Dorian. Can you feel Fear taking hold?’

‘You’ve possessed me,’ Dorian breathed. He felt it. He felt it coursing through his blood, what mage wouldn’t have? It was as if it had plunged its hand inside him, and slid its icy fingers around his heart. It was like it could crush him, any second.

‘If you refused to take us back inside Skyhold where we might have done the work ourselves, you’d have served instead as our agent.’

‘You want to use me to get to the Inquisitor,’ Dorian deduced, and felt sick.

‘You made it so easy too. Oh Dorian.’ Alander assumed that charming smile, but Dorian saw only his empty eyes now. ‘So _desperate_ for attention. How you clung to me in the chantry, like I was the Maker, Himself. How badly you needed me just touching you. You’d have been perfectly mine, if it hadn’t been for the elf. You probably thought he did you a favour and saved you from your fate. It’s a pity for you that we couldn’t finish the ritual. If we had, you’d have lasted. You’d have gone back to Skyhold, living as a slave to my master and doing his work, but you’d have lived.’

‘You’ll have to enlighten me as to what my worse alternative will be, then.’ Dorian said, fighting the wretched urge to fall on his knees.

‘The funny kink with blood magic is it’s so unstable,’ Alander said. ‘Get it wrong; the Nightmare drains our target dry. It’s been a hard task getting the possessed to _live_ past three days. I doubt you will. But it’s no matter. Your body will still walk.’

Dorian’s skin crawled.

‘I found an undead Inquisition soldier,’ he breathed, ‘a day from Skyhold. Your work, I presume?’

‘My, he did get far,’ Alander said sounding amused. ‘He must have been quite the looker by the time you found him. That’s the real pity in this of course, Dorian. I’d have liked to see you last—you are so beautiful after all.’

Dorian turned, reeling, for the exit, leaving the monster to rot in the shadows. He let his feet guide him, barely sensible of where he was going. What do you do when you have a day left to live? Where do you go? He found himself standing in a corridor, staring at a door. He raised his hand to the wood, hesitated, and knocked.

Fenris answered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SURELY THEY ARE JUST GOING TO TALK LIKE CIVILISED MEN IN THE NEXT CHAPTER I mean, this isn't an explicit rated fic or anything~


	8. VIII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow guys, the warm feedback I got on the last chapter from old friends and new just means so much to me. I just want to thank you all sincerely for taking the time to tell me what you think. When I started posting here I'd never put any work out there before in my life. In fact, I could count on one hand the people who had read my writing. You've all helped to build my confidence and my resilience with your praise and constructive criticism, so thank you from the bottom of my heart.  
> Now, enjoy the gay porn (۶ꈨຶꎁꈨຶ )۶ʸᵉᵃʰᵎ

 

_‘Find me still searching_

_For someone to lead me_

_Can you guide me_

_To the revolt inside me’_

_-Codex: ‘Rise’_

Fenris opened the door a crack.

‘ _What_.’ he demanded on first glance. Then he saw the sweat, the shaking, the obvious distress. Fenris’ face changed entirely from irritation to alarm. He opened the door wide. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ 

Dorian had to lean in the doorway; his legs were trembling so violently. He looked past Fenris to see a couple of opened bottles of wine on a table and a bed still made.

‘Not sleeping then?’ Dorian began weakly, noticing the faded look in Fenris’ eyes- the only giveaway that he had been in fact, getting himself quietly drunk. Dorian gestured to the wine. ‘Be a chum and pour me some of that, won’t you?’

Fenris silently did so, watching Dorian all the while. He sat, and kicked out a chair for Dorian.

Dorian waved it away. He couldn’t sit. He had to walk. He had to—he threw back the entire glass and paced. Fenris, eyes watching his every move, wordlessly filled another and pushed it across the table to him.

‘It’s not working,’ Dorian gasped after the second draught, grasping at his throat, which felt like it was going to close over from panic. Nor did it work with the third drink. Or the forth. Fifth. He couldn’t catch his breath. He staggered and caught the mantelpiece, clutching it with his head bowed and his hair, an unmade mess, falling across his eyes.

‘I’m a walking dead man,’ he gasped. ‘I never wanted to go like this.’

He sank to the floor, clutching his face.

Something cool rested on his shoulder.

The presence pulled him out of his terrified thoughts and anchored him back into the physical realm. Dorian turned his head and saw Fenris, crouched by him, with his hand laid on Dorian’s bare skin.

‘You’re burning,’ Fenris said, pulling back his hand and considering it. ‘I’ll fetch a healer.’

‘Don’t go—’ Dorian exclaimed, suddenly unable to bear the thought of being left alone to die. He shook his head. ‘It won’t help. Not for possession.’

Fenris sat back on his heels and stared at Dorian for a long time.

‘Tell me _everything_ ,’ he demanded.

Dorian did. The parts he could remember. Everything since the ritual was becoming a blur—he couldn’t tell what was nightmare and what was real. And, there were other things…memories that he’d never had…drifts of fade clogging up his mind…

Fenris let him relay what he could in patient silence, for what felt like a very long time.

At the end, the elf, all colour drained from his face, stared at the floor in silence. He seemed lost in his own personal despair. ‘The demon survived. What was it _for_ , Hawke?’ he gasped under his breath. ‘The demon lives, but you’re _dead’_. He clenched his fist. ‘Was it a fair trade?’

Dorian felt like an intruder, wondering if Fenris was even aware he was thinking aloud.

‘It never is with demons’, he murmured, wanting to say something of comfort, but unable to find anything but the cold reality. Dorian’s voice pulled Fenris back into the present. The elf lifted his eyes to the mage and brushed his white hair from his furrowed brow.

‘I arrived at the ritual too late for your sake, then,’ Fenris said.

Dorian shook his head. ‘No, you foiled their plot. I’d have been used as their assassin against Trevelyan. To have been remembered for _that_ …But I will succumb to possession before I die…and then after…’

There was another long silence between them.

‘There isn’t anything the Inquisition can do for me.’ Dorian knew. ‘Sending word of this will barely make reply before I’m…before it’s too late.’ He turned his head away but reached for Fenris’ arm, needing to feel that anchor lest his fears pull him away again. The elf stiffened beneath the touch, but tolerated it.

‘Promise me one thing,’ Dorian murmured. ‘Don’t let that demon take my mind before the end. Spare me that.’

At that, Fenris suddenly reached for his blade.

 _’Kaffas—_ ’ Dorian threw up his hands and cowered. ‘Not just yet, you _bloody_ —’

‘It was a joke,’ Fenris admitted, showing Dorian his hand, empty. For a moment Dorian could have sworn he saw the faint trace of a smile on the elf’s face.

‘You’re capable of that?’ Dorian asked in a shaky disbelief.

Fenris put his head to the side. ‘It’s…been a while.’ That smirk. A mocking one, but his eyes…smiled.

They twinkled.

‘You know—I’ve always thought necromancy was fascinating,’ Dorian confessed. ‘Always studying mortalitasi magic, myself. Never thought _I’d_ be the animated corpse. It really takes the sparkle out of it. Burn my body, won’t you? I can’t bear the thought. Do you know what the worst part is in all this?’

Fenris waited patiently to be told. Dorian recalled the corpse in the foothills of Skyhold.

‘A month from now, if they somehow get their way, I’m going to be really, _really_ ugly.’ 

Fenris let out a low chuckle. It was the first time Dorian had heard him laugh. That was even better than his smile. Dorian laughed too. It was better than crying, which he certainly felt like doing.

‘That would be a waste,’ Fenris said.

_Oh?_

‘Do my ears deceive me,’ Dorian began, ‘or was that actually you throwing me a bone?’

‘Don’t make me take it back,’ Fenris warned, again with that faint little smirk. Dorian’s heart began to beat a little faster.

He was never going to know what Fenris and Hawke had had together. Maybe that was for the best. He’d wanted so much...he always sort of thought maybe, _somehow,_ there’d be a way back to Tevinter. He’d always thought he’d have found _someone_ who’d have wanted him for more than a night.

Thirty years hadn’t been enough.

‘What would you do if you knew your time was up?’ Dorian asked.

Fenris gave it serious consideration for a moment. Then he climbed across the floor on all fours and pulled the bottle of wine down from the table. He passed it to Dorian, before finding a third to open for himself.

‘Drink a _lot,’_ he answered. Then he looked at Dorian with pity. His face, always set and hardened, was now suddenly almost gentle. ‘I don’t know. You can stay here. If you want.’

Dorian barely thought about what he did next. It was as if his body was acting on its own accord. He reached out his hand and brushed his fingertips up the side of Fenris’ neck, before smearing a thumb lightly over his bottom lip. It was soft, and full, and slightly wetted. The elf furrowed his brow but his mouth parted slightly in response, and his eyes fluttered closed at the sensation. How long had it been since someone had touched Fenris like this? Had he been craving it?

‘What are you doing?’ Fenris murmured, but he put no stop to it.

‘I think I want you,’ Dorian admitted, surprised even himself. ‘More badly then anything right now.’

 _This was Fenris,_ he recalled _. Fenris, who hated him. The elf who he hated back…didn’t he?_

Dorian let his hand fall down to the elf’s collarbone, rubbing his hand along it to his shoulder. Fenris’ body arched in response, and he made a low groan from deep in his throat, as if hypnotised by the sensation.

‘This doesn’t mean,’ he managed ‘I don’t think you’re—‘

‘I know,’ Dorian breathed. ‘A bad, bad man.’

‘So long as we’re— _Ah_ ,’ Fenris gasped as Dorian worked his hand lower. ‘…Clear’.

Dorian brushed his fingers down seeking out Fenris’ nipple. It was already hard beneath his clothes.

‘It’s not going to matter in a day.’ Dorian reminded them both. What was there to lose?

‘It _has_ been…a very long time,’ Fenris admitted, eyes closed still as if he was trying to forget it was _The Mage_ making him feel this way. ‘I’ve wanted…I’ve _needed_ —‘

He suddenly dropped his wine. It glugged out of the bottle over the carpet, but neither of them cared— Fenris had stretched across on his hands and knees and pressed his mouth to Dorian’s.

Maker what were they doing?

 _Fenris_.

Warm, wet.

The taste of him.

The scent that rolled off his skin.

He was cool to the touch and soft as calve leather. Strange. _Good_.  

_They were both drunk. So so drunk._

It wasn’t nearly enough. Dorian opened his mouth, craving more—needing to block out everything. Fenris responded like he needed it just as badly. He bit down on Dorian’s lip and in the moment Dorian drew a little gasp of pain, Fenris drove his tongue in, slicking it along Dorian’s. The elf ran both his hands behind Dorian’s head, pulling them tighter together. _More_. Dorian with his one good hand reached forward, stroking down Fenris’ chest. His belly. His—

‘ _Ah,’_ the elf broke from the kiss to swing his leg over Dorian’s hip and—

There was really nothing between them than a few layers of cloth already stretching taught, and Dorian could feel _everything_ of Fenris: the hard jut of his burgeoning erection. He himself was almost painfully tight in his pants and aching with the ecstasy of Fenris’ weight bearing down on him. Slowly…unbearably slowly, Fenris rocked his hips, rubbing Dorian’s cock along the length of his own, and then pressed it firmly down along the seam of his arse.

‘ _Fenris_ ,’ Dorian groaned, trying to _remind_ himself. _What where they doing?_ Fenris wrapped his legs around Dorian’s back, tightening the contact, writhing in slow hard jerks. It was teasing agony. He could hear the elf’s panting against his neck, feel his hot breaths, the tremors, the gasps of pleasure that Dorian knew escaped his mouth too. Fenris’ eyes were screwed shut, lost to his pleasure. He wouldn’t look at Dorian. They couldn’t meet each other’s eye.

 _I disgust him,_ Dorian understood. _It’s only pleasure. The desperate, mutual need for distraction._

They were stripping each other, thumbing at buttons with drunk slipping fingers and ripping off layers in frustrated impatience. The moment, _that moment_ of Fenris’ bare skin pressed to his…

Cool at first, then blooming warmth. Soft skin and firm muscle underneath.

Dorian’s one hand was struggling, and Fenris was taking off his pants and then taking off Dorian’s. This was happening so fast. Fenris’ unfocused gaze fixed on the clothes, on Dorian’s body, never lifting to his face. Careful not to. Then, both completely bare, the elf turned and gripped the edge of the bed, making himself ready.

Ready, for Dorian’s claim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My loving thanks to my beta Anna as always, who is such a good friend and weaves this filthy trash into filthy well-reading trash.  
> Additionally, I would like to thank my fabulous father who will never ever get the link to this, but non-the-less proudly informed my extended family at my Nana's 80th that I publish gay erotica on the internet. Nana's verdict: "Oh you lead such an interesting life, darling."


	9. IX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have momentarily risen from the depths of my uni hell to give you all this, please accept this humble angstporn~
> 
> Thanks as always to my loyal beta Anna who edited this through the fingers covering her face because she finds sex scenes so gross. That's professionalism!!

 

 

By candlelight, his _body_ …the scene was more erotic than Dorian could have imagined possible. Fenris’ hands clenching the sheets. The muscles in his back rippling under his skin. His chest heaving in need. His back sunk and his legs spread, arse presented, cock stiff and flush to his belly. All of that, but Dorian’s eyes ran along the white snaking scars that cut into Fenris from head to toe.

Dorian just stared.

When he made no move, Fenris bowed his head, and in barely a trace, whispered, ‘Don’t make me beg.’

It wasn’t the playful demand of sex. Fenris had not uttered it with Dorian’s arousal in mind.

It was real.

It was vulnerable.

It was ashamed.

Dorian knelt and fitted his hips to Fenris, but it wasn’t to claim carnal pleasure. He curled his body, flattening his chest to the elf’s back protectively, and stroked his fingertips along the deep white scars. Fenris’ muscles seized under the touch and he sucked in a sharp breath. Dorian lifted his hand, listening, waiting. There came no refusal, and unable to help himself he ran his hands lightly over the elf’s hips and—he didn’t even think about what he did next, on bringing his lips lightly to the elf’s back. He pressed a line of slow kisses down the run of scars.

It was all he could do for them.

‘What are you doing?’ Fenris suddenly snapped, reaching around a hand and shoving Dorian back. By candle-flame, with his hair falling across his eyes, it was hard to tell what the elf’s expression was. Anger? Or was it fear?

‘Do my marks of abuse fuel some kind of fetish for you?’ he asked, but instead of allowing Dorian to answer—perhaps fearing his answer—Fenris shoved Dorian square in the chest, knocking him on his back. Without waiting, perhaps determined not to let his better judgement catch up, Fenris crawled over Dorian’s body and—Maker, _grasped_ _him_ _in hand_ and—

Dorian looked up at the elf straddling his hips, stroking them both together in long firm pumps of his fist. Waves of hot pleasure began to build again deep inside Dorian’s lower belly, and his body was reacting of its own accord. His hips thrust, driving himself deeper into Fenris’ hand, in a mindless need for more. Dorian closed his eyes, hearing his loud desperate moans escape him.

There were good arguments to stop this he knew: his mind had been filling with them only seconds ago… _but this pleasure_.

Something pressed down on him—something softer and tighter than a fist. Dorian opened his eyes to see Fenris flushed red down his neck and chest from arousal. His mouth was parted, his eyes screwed shut, and he heaved shaky panting exhales and he pressed himself down on the end of Dorian’s cock. His whole body tremored and jerked as he pressed down harder, taking Dorian in slowly, inch by inch, bit by bit more, with every next little push. It took everything Dorian had not to thrust his hips and drive himself in all the way. Fenris was impossibly tight, and swollen and wet from his arousal. Then the resistance suddenly gave. Dorian felt himself taken to the base, clenched in pulsing muscle. Fenris let out a moan and pressed himself down even harder, determined to take everything. He paused for a moment to adjust, body going boneless, shuddering as he began to fuck himself, laying his hands on Dorian’s chest for better purchase.

 _What am I supposed to do_ , Dorian thought as he gazed up at the elf writhing on him, who could be so easily broken by one wrong move—one misstep. Dorian lay paralysed in a war of pleasure and sickening doubt. If he should grab the elf too hard… Pin him down. Pull his hair. Push his head down, his wet little mouth taking Dorian…

Would Fenris just see a Magister?

_An abuser?_

And Fenris was _still_ yet to open his eyes and look at Dorian, and properly _see_ the man he was riding. To consider the consequences. _To truly consent._ Even with his eyes closed, his head was turned to the side to avoid even the _chance_ of glancing him.

_This is wrong._

‘No, I can’t…do this,’ Dorian panted, seizing Fenris by his shoulder and pushing him off. In a second of reversal, Dorian was on his knees looking down on Fenris, lying under him in the carpet panting with wide confused eyes. The shove had broken the elf from his trance, and he stared up at Dorian, the shock in his eyes already sharpening to frustration.

‘What do you mean you can’t, mage,’ Fenris snapped. ‘I was doing all the work.’

‘ _That_ ,’ Dorian exclaimed. ‘You don’t want me; you can’t stand me!’

‘Now, even more so then usual,’ Fenris agreed, writhing a little under Dorian. Maker, could he stop doing that? It was so hard not to reach down and…

‘I know _better,’_ Dorian clenched his fist. ‘You think I have no idea what you’ve suffered at the hands of Magisters. But I do. Not nearly the whole picture, but enough to know that _this…_ ’ he gestured to them both. ‘Can’t be doing you any good, and I… _I know better.’_

Fenris propped himself up on his elbows. He raised an eyebrow and held his silence. Dorian realized his elaboration was being demanded.

‘We’ve met long ago.’ Dorian confessed. ‘In Tevinter.’

Fenris shook his head at a loss, searching Dorian’s face but unable to draw anything to it. 

‘I wouldn’t expect you to remember.’ Dorian said, his assumptions confirmed. ‘It was over a decade ago.’

‘Then you saw me when I was...’ Fenris put it together. He clenched his fists. ‘As Denarius’ _pet_.’

Hearing Fenris name his abuser sent a chill down Dorian’s body.

‘Yes.’ Dorian nodded. ‘I know something more of your scars than those I can see.’ He brushed the back of his hand along one that snaked up Fenris’ inner thigh. ‘I was just eighteen,’ Dorian murmured, ‘and before that day I had little thought for slaves, nor criticized Tevinter beyond my own personal trials. You ought to know I never forgot you. Fenris. _You_ , and all you represented to me, were part of the reason I eventually left Tevinter—Part of why I always thought I’d have to return. “I won’t do nothing _”_ , I’ve been telling myself all this time. I wouldn’t sit idle and allow Tevinter to continue to be the monster it is. Do you see? To then have you look at me and see me no different from _them_ …’ He shook his head unable to go on. ‘I _can’t_ dothis.’

He climbed off Fenris’ body and collected up his clothes, struggling to dress one handed and burning with frustration and shame.

‘So I’m to understand-,’ Fenris began, voice suddenly icy. ‘Let me get this clear. Not only did you deliberately humiliate me as your slave to an audience the other day, but now I’m to learn that you did so with full understanding of what that meant for me? Tell me, what defense can you have for that?’

‘None’, Dorian admitted. ‘You’re right. That act is indefensible. I won’t add insult now by trying to pretend otherwise.’

He couldn’t get these damn buttons on, it had taken him a half hour this morning and he needed to be gone _now_ , and he could feel the heat of Fenris’ eyes on him. Would just walking out stark naked actually rate as more shameful?

Whatever answer Fenris had expected, Dorian’s had evidently disarmed him. ‘Dorian—,’ he began, sounding uncertain of himself.

Dorian froze.

 

Not “ _mage”_.

 _Dorian_.

 

‘The next day, when that blood mage had called us to his room, and he tried to…’ Fenris trailed off. ‘But you didn’t let him. I have been thinking you did so out of jealousy, wanting his attentions for yourself instead. But… were you _protecting_ me?’

Dorian gave a small nod.

‘Stay.’ Fenris murmured in a low, doubting, softened rumble, the likes of which Dorian hadn’t thought him capable. ‘Don’t be alone tonight.’

Dorian hadn’t even been aware how violently he was shivering until the warmth of a body pressed against his back and it began to subside. Fenris leaned his head against the nape of Dorian’s neck. He didn’t say anything; he just stood there, warming Dorian until his muscles relaxed.

‘Understand that what you did is not something that is easy for me to forgive by any measure’, Fenris said at last. ‘but I won’t see you humbled and remain a hypocrite, myself. I see now that I have not been fair to you. It is true I’ve had my reasons to be bitter and suspicious. Yet, it is also true that I carry anger within me that I’ve never been able to be rid of, and it has blinded me. I have imposed my assumptions on you without doubting they were true. Without… without _Hawke_ —’ but Fenris stopped and Dorian could feel him clenching his jaw and how his throat strained in the struggle to keep himself composed. He let out a frustrated, self-conscious grunt, shaking his head at a loss. ‘I’ve had nothing to hope for.’ He admitted at last. ‘I’ve had no reason for anything. Your Inquisitor may have saved the world, but…it wasn’t saved for me. I have seen the worst side of people and have been too long without seeing the good. I didn’t expect to find otherwise. Certainly never in you.’

‘It almost sounds as if you’re saying you don’t hate my dirty magister guts,’ Dorian murmured.

‘Make no mistake,’ Fenris bristled, breaking away and coming to face him. ‘I can barely stand you. You’re pampered and used to getting your way. You can’t ride a horse for your life and you’re insufferably smug. Added to that, even having held every prejudice against you…I find you so intolerably attractive I’ve barely known what to do with myself.’

‘Oh, like that is it? It’s a natural reaction,’ Dorian said, trying to hide his smile by acting affronted. ‘You certainly hid it well. On a horse you’re a _sadist_ , when you dragged me into that cellar you made me stink like cheese for the entire day, and I suppose you think your long, unkempt hair makes you look mysterious and dashing?’

Fenris grabbed a fist of his white hair self-consciously. ‘I…I don’t think about it,’ he admitted sounding suddenly very unsure.

‘Well it _does_ and it’s distracting.’ Dorian folded his arms. ‘While I’m at it: you said you hoped I’d been sacrificed in that ritual. _That_ was rude.’

‘I…did say that,’ Fenris recalled, actually sounding ashamed, shoulders slumping in concession. ‘I was somewhat…stressed.’

‘Rough day at the office?’

‘I _had_ just murdered an entire cult for you.’

‘All for me? I’m blushing,’ Dorian smirked, and looked down at himself. ‘Does it feel strange to you that we are standing here having this conversation stark naked?’

Fenris looked at Dorian, visibly at the end of his wits. ‘Mage, if you don’t kiss me right now, then I swear I—’

Dorian scooped the elf up and lay him down on the bed. He climbed over Fenris, slipping his hand beneath his head and kissed him long and deep. When finally they broke apart, Dorian murmured, ‘don’t worry. I won’t make you beg.’

 

This time was different.

This time, Fenris _looked_ at him with a furrowed brow of wonder, as if seeing him entirely anew.

This time when Dorian rubbed his thumb along the scars, Fenris only gasped, and clung on tighter.

 

*

 

In the deep of the night, Dorian woke with a demon in his mind that couldn’t be silenced. On the floor lay all of Fenris’ gear, including a long silver dagger that the elf affixed to his leg. Careful not to wake him, Dorian shifted out from under Fenris’s embrace, and dressed.

He took the knife and clutched it to his chest, and made to the door.

 

_I have to be the one_

He thought.

 

_I have to be the one to do it._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still can't believe how sweet you guys are. 100 subscribers! This means the world, thank you all, your support and comments give me light <3


	10. X

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the great tradition of all my favourite web comic artists, my regular updates fell prey to some pretty crazy life dramas. I also really struggled with this chapter, if truth be known! Action scenes are what challenge me the most. 
> 
> Please let me make it up to y'all with this double length chap!  
> Just one more to go after this, which is mostly finished and won't take 1 billion years to post. x

 

 

 

One foot in front of the other. Surging deeper into the thick of the crowd. Closer and closer to the center of the room, where the ballroom’s beating heart surged with life. Overhead hung a thousand glittering crystals, shining light into every crack in the stone. He raised his eyes to up at the chandelier, centering himself, light branding white spots on his vision. The living pressed in around him. Swirls of skirts. Laughs of lovers. Blinding light. _Too_ bright. Glitter, distraction. Too many people. Too much. Too close.

Suffocating, and…

Tugging?

An irritating, unrelenting tugging. He sharpened to his body and traced nerve signals to his shoulder. He raised an arm, reaching to investigate, and it felt like pushing against water: weightlessly shifting through heavy space. Finally his hand closed on another’s. It was cold, smooth. Closed on him like a claw, and impossible to prize off. On turning, he found an elf attached. White hair, vaguely familiar.

Wanted, but unwanted.

_He is a threat._

 

What had the elf been asking? He tried to tune into the low growling, _urgent_ frequency.

‘Where have you _been_ all day?’ the elf repeated, hand still gripping his shoulder and shaking him.

Where had he been? Where _had_ be been? He couldn’t…seem to remember. He only knew that it was the final evening of five.

‘When I couldn’t find you—’ the elf pushed his hair back off his face with both hands, taking a deep breath. ‘You took my knife. I’ve been thinking that you had…that I was searching for a _body.’_

_The knife. Yes._

The metal pressed flat to his skin under his robes, warmed like a part of his body. Like a part he needed.

A cracking sting flashed his vision white, and his mind sharp. _Fenris_. Fenris had just slapped him and, hand raised, looked poised to do it again.

‘ _Dorian!’_ Fenris repeated, perhaps for a third or forth time now. His brow was knotted with a warrior’s fire, but his eyes…they danced with something else.

 

_He fears._

 

It was a colour, a scent, a sound. It was a sixth sense never known before—rich and irresistible—like blood to a shark. Dorian closed his eyes and breathed in deep, feeling it. Fenris’s every fibre of muscle tensed. His heart pumped adrenaline down his every inch. His nerves fired off jolts of electricity, at Dorian’s every movement. Dorian stepped closer, _tasting_ those billions of tiny reactions. _He was a hunter, gaining on his prey, blooded to this slender elf who not long ago, writhed at his touch and shuddering beneath him. Who was shuddering now, just from his gaze alone._

The two of them were pressed close by the packed crowd, secluded by a show of people’s backs all around them. Dorian reached out and ran his hands over the plains of Fenris’s body, feeling it fight against itself, surging to press hard against his touch only to pull back, as though Dorian’s flesh was both irresistible and repellant.

_You are a rare feast, little elf._

_Your fears are so many, and run so deep._

_What a thing it would be to drink you dry._

What it would be to close the last of the space between them. He’d take Fenris in his arms, and press his mouth down on him, running his tongue along those bitten lips, then pushing past them to wet that mouth that had run dry.

‘Dorian, try to concentrate,’ Fenris urged, survivalist instincts primed, and drawing back a pace, putting distance back between them. ‘You don’t look well.’

 

_He is suspicious._

_He will stop us if he can._

_Send him away._

 

‘A drink will do me good, I assure you.’ Dorian said. Acting _Dorian_ was muscle memory, and apparently convincing enough. Fenris hesitated, looking torn.

‘I’ll fetch one. Stay.’ he conceded, going, but cast a look of doubt back over his shoulder. ‘You had better not dare to move from this spot.’

Dorian had no need to move. He was already in position, but he had a small opening. He drew the long dagger hidden from below his coat.

 

_We won’t make it within the Inquisition walls before you expire,_

_but we’ll make use of you before you do._

Somewhere, some deep part of him brought a mage’s awareness to light. Every thought was a melding of _I_ , _you_ , _us_. Instructive. Determinate. There was no break where Dorian ended and It began.

_All of these lives to feed on…_

_You must be the one to do it._

_Free me._

 

Dorian, forgotten and unwatched amongst a crowd fixed upon themselves, tugged at the knotted bandage on his hand and let the cloth unravel to the floor. He held out the bruised and swollen mess that was barely recognizable as a hand, and doubled his grip on the hilt of the blade. He raised the knife. It caught the crystal light of the chandelier overhead and flashed white and—

 

The blade sank into sutures—

Into flesh—

_Into a blood mage._

 

Two realms slammed together like colliding planets.

The sickening crack split the air, tearing a wound from Thedas to The Fade, bleeding light—the acid green of whipping hellfire—across every turned face in the ballroom. And all eyes were fixed on the rift as it widened, tunneling into a _hellscape_ beyond, where dark shadows flickered and crawled.

‘ _Dorian!’_

That first shout sounded a split second before the entire hall collapsed into seething panic. Dorian crumpled to his knees, agony catapulting him back into his bodily awareness, and a semblance of his own consciousness. He clutched his gushing hand to his chest and rocked. The crowd clawed and climbed one another, reeling from the center of the ballroom leaving only Dorian: christened in blood, kneeling before the ruptured Veil, and fit to be the first claimed for his atrocity. Looking into green death, words sifted into the forefront of his mind. Words like pearls on a string of verses, played to a haunting tune in Skyhold, which he’d never see again. The song that told of what had happened at Adamant. How all of this had begun.

 

_Oh Grey Warden_

_What have you done?_

_The oath you have taken_

_Is all but broken_

 

Seconds now, and demons would pour into Thedas.

‘Dorian.’ Fenris repeated, skidding to a stop before him, and dropping to a crouch. That one utterance packed mingled fury and concern. Fenris glanced at the rift, ripped a strip of fabric from his shirt and wrenched a knot down at Dorian’s wrist, clamping down on the opened artery.

 

_All is undone,_

_Demons have come,_

_to destroy this peace_

_We have had for so long_

 

‘Get up! You’ll be dead if you don’t’, Fenris hissed, as the rift’s crackles grew louder and the walls and floor began to tremor in trepidation.

‘I don’t know why I did it,’ Dorian gasped, tears now obscuring his vision. ‘ _Why did I do it?’_

_Ally or Foe?_

_Maker only knows._

_Ally or Foe_

_The Maker only knows._

 

‘Kafass,’ Fenris swore and slapped Dorian across the face with force. ‘Concentrate! You’re all but entirely possessed—Get up. I shouldn’t have let you from my sight, I _should have_ —but it’s too late for both our regrets, Dorian _._ This demon doesn’t have all of you yet. You can fight it _._ ’

‘No,’ Dorian shook his head. ‘I can’t. I can only open the rift, not close it’, He tried to gather strength in his legs. It was like a dream: you try to run, but your legs are so weak. ‘Only the Inquisitor can. _Maker_ , _I can’t end it all as a blood mage—_ I _swore—’_

_Can you be forgiven_

_when the cold grave has come?_

 

‘I know what it’s like,’ Fenris said. ‘When it gets in there’— he touched his finger to Dorian’s temple. ‘Telling you that you’ve lost. That you have no choice.’

He cupped Dorian’s face in his hands, forcing him to look up into the elf’s wide eyes. Greener than the seas of Qarinus. Maker, they were as deep; surging with destructive power and generous mercy.

‘Hear me now: you are not a slave, Dorian.’ Fenris stressed. ‘ _Fight it._ ’

If anyone else had said it, it would have meant nothing. If it wasn’t Fenris standing before him, free and proud, Dorian would already be long lost.

‘How _did_ yousurvive it, Fenris _?_ ’ he whispered, so desperate to be saved.

‘I had Hawke,’ Fenris stated. ‘Now you have me.’

Even in this deep unfathomable black, here was Fenris, a glowing white flower in bloom. Was it Dorian’s mind playing more tricks, or did a sudden sweet perfume of night jasmine gust out from the roiling Fade?

‘Then you had better help me up,’ Dorian said, swallowing back the fear and drawing his staff. ‘I’ll buy what time I can. Lead everyone out.’

Fenris shook his head. ‘I wasn’t there to defend Hawke against this thing. I’ll be damned if I’m going to just let it take you.’

‘This was my doing alone—‘ Dorian protested. ‘It’s my responsibility—’

The crackling suddenly silenced: the inhale before a scream.

Then the mere concept of silence was forgotten for good, as a crack as deafening as lightning blasting to earth.

The ground _quaked_.

The crystal chandelier shattered into a rain of shimmering dust, and green tendrils shot from the rift, feeling the outside plane.

 

With a whitening flash, the room was filled with hell; unleashed.

 

‘ _Go’_ , Dorian exclaimed, springing in front of Fenris to face the snarling demons. He raised his staff, summoning the Fade to his command. But Fenris, to Dorian’s dismay, pushed forward to stand by him to face down their enemy. ‘My mind is made up, mage,’ Fenris said, drawing his sword and beginning to radiate his brilliant blue. ‘I face this thing to the death—its, or mine. There’s no end I’ve wanted better.’

The three nearest demons—terrors—surged towards them, straining their bodies towards the scent of living, corruptible flesh. Fenris didn’t wait for them to close in.

‘Come and face me!’ he snarled, and launched across the ballroom at unnatural speed. His sword plunged through one, cutting it down in one swipe, before wrenching free with a spray of blood and hacking into the back of another. The third raised its spindly arm, claws poised like razors to slash into Fenris’ back. Dorian blew the arm clean off. It shrieked for a second only before Fenris spun and sundered head from body.

Dorian crouched to catch his breath, expecting Fenris to take pause beside him. The elf however, allowed no time to gather himself, only plunging deeper toward the rift.

 _No, fall back,_ Dorian wanted to yell, but his mouth instead flew into incarnation. He sent an orb of lightning over Fenris that reached for every surrounding demon and rooted it to the spot in paralyzing agony. A second’s opening was all Fenris needed. He charged, cutting everything down in his path. When Dorian’s spell was spent, every demon collapsed to the ground, dead.

 

The first rule of combat for any battle mage was to stay off the field. A mage’s place was confined to the boundaries, but for Dorian, to do so had never been so _excruciating_. If he wanted to be of use he had to stay back, he knew, but Fenris drove himself deeper into the throng of demons, cutting his way forward. They now came at him from all sides.

 _Reckless!_ _He’ll tire himself out,_ Dorian realized. _There is no end to these demons as long as the rift is open. They’re going to overcome him, and I’ll be hanging back here just to watch. He’s not going to survive this. I’ve killed him._

Fenris plunged his hand deep into the chest of the last terror and ripped it free with relish, crushing a heart in his hands. He’d cleared the field almost single handedly. Dorian had battled enough rifts to know what came next, but Fenris…Dorian realized with a sudden panic that Fenris was inexperienced, and couldn’t be aware of the second wave that was readying. The elf was panting, already flagging and bending to nurse a stitch.

‘Fenris, get back!’ Dorian shouted. ‘More come!’

Fenris had barely seconds to heed the warning when the second cracking explosion unleashed and he was completely surrounded:

Five Terrors, and one Pride Demon far too many.

Fenris craned his head up at the towering monstrosity and raised his sword, heels kicking off toward it, without a second’s hesitation. He dived into a roll between its legs, slashing his blade deep into the Achilles tendon of a leg. It roared a laugh of amusement. Anything less was not in its nature.

Fenris’s back was exposed, and it took Dorian _everything he had_ to stop the terrors from reaching it.

Four of them fell, but one… _one_ pressed on, and Dorian’s staff made a little hiss. He’d run out of Mana.

Seconds, it would replenish in _seconds_ , but, _no_ , that was all it would take for the demon to close the remaining gap and—

The terror let out a shriek and phased into the fade, materializing behind Fenris and slamming him to the ground, raking it’s claws down his front.

 _To bloody hell with standing back and doing nothing_ —Dorian hurtled forward. He was a man with a big stick, if nothing else. He swung back his staff and brought it down with all his power, cracking the demon over it’s skull. The staff split in completely in two. _Fuck_. Amendment: He was now a man with two sharp wooden stakes. He drove one into the belly of the terror before wheeling around and plunging the second through the foot of the pride demon. Both demons staggered back with shrieks of pain, and Dorian felt the tingle of magic recharge in him. He unleashed a jagged wall of flames on them both, driving them back and melting their flesh off the bone. Fenris clambered back to his feet, took up his sword, and gave a little time to regard Dorian’s work.

‘Fenhedis’, he hissed under his breath. Dorian turned his head and saw why.

‘Oh, _fucking_ —’ Dorian’s mouth blurted. Eight long slender, furred spindly prongs extended through the void, feeling for the floor and searching for purchase. It began to heave its enormous bulbous abdomen through the rift.

 

_‘Ahh.’_

 

It sighed; voice dripping with gratification, as if the world it entered was a warm bath.

 

_‘So much fear in the air, what a perfect birth. Dorian, what a wonderful blood mage you’ve made in the end. Why did you ever think you could fight what was inevitably your birthright? Why did you think you could inspire the hearts of Tevinter to change, when you’ve never touched the heart of even a single man?’_

_‘And Fenris. If you’d been there you might have saved Hawke. But in the end, he left you behind, didn’t he? You’d have never left him were roles reversed, but then, you always were a loyal pet. Danarius, Hawke, and now the Inquisition. Pitiful. You’re nothing without a master to serve.’_

 

‘Go ahead’, Fenris snarled. ‘Make it all the easier for me to tear you to pieces.’

Dorian wondered how Fenris could sound so absolute. Was it only adrenaline talking? Dorian’s staff was beyond repair, and he was only half as good without it, and Fenris’ stamina too, was already at its limit, having had no time for respite. Was it only that Fenris was, at the core of his nature, unyielding and fierce, to the very finish? Dorian felt like a coward himself, by contrast. As Dorian glanced across at the elf, he saw the green eyes burn with the reflection of the fade-fire.

Just as wild.

Just as much of a reckoning force of destruction.

 _This was the demon that had taken Hawke from Fenris._ There was no chance of convincing him to forfeit this fight and flee for his life, and Dorian… Dorian couldn’t leave him here.

‘Fenris…’ he began, not sure what he needed to say before the end. Perhaps the elf was too fixated now, and didn’t hear Dorian. He gave no indication of having done so. His eyes were calculating his foe, his lips in a snarl, and his sword at the ready.

_‘Hawke threw himself away for nothing.’_

 

The enormous Nightmare shuddered in pleasure as it uttered the taunt, shimmying and lugging its grotesque body slowly across the ballroom towards them.

_‘Here you are, agent of the Inquisition for whom he died,_

_and you’re the one who has allowed it to come to this._

_Because of you, Fenris, Hawke’s death has come to mean nothing.’_

It lowered its voice, adding with relish,

_‘All those times you toyed with the thought…_

_You should have just done it, you know.’_

 

Fenris let out a cry—a cracked, broken howl of grief-turned-rage. He phased from Dorian’s side and the room blackened in the absence of his brilliant light. He burst back into being across the room, shining like a fiery blue star, and poised to be as deadly: his blade was raised overhead, gripped with both hands. He swung it down with all his power on one long hairy spider leg, sundering it from body in one clean slice. It lopped off onto the ground, twitching and writhing, and black blood sprayed across the room.

The demon _shrieked_.

All seven remaining limbs were suddenly everywhere. The Nightmare stumbled and stabbed at a barely parrying Fenris, with deadly razor protrusions of bone. They sprouted at every gnarled hairy joint, honed to slice a man into two like lard.

A man, or an elf. One misstep…

 

Dorian jolted into action, rocketing off a spell that sailed past Fenris and caught a leg as it plunged through air, elf-bound. It went up in flames, wrenching back off target, just inches away. The Nightmare thrashed and Dorian cringed; slammed with agonized screeches of fury; the stomach-churning stench of burning flesh.

 _Fenris_ barely twitched, sparing only one second of his concentration to note the withering limb. If he contemplated his near miss for any longer, it would have been averted for nothing: he’d be impaled on another. The elf was such a flurry of ducking and dodging, that to Dorian’s eyes, he was little more than a glowing blur of stabs and swipes. In the shadow of the monstrous demon, however, Fenris sized up as no more than a stinging fly.

 _He needs help,_ Dorian knew, but with mana limited, timing was everything if he was to be any kind of use. That was if he didn’t fall down from pulsing pain and draining weakness, first—

_‘You’re useless,’_ the demon whispered in his mind. _‘Just another insignificant Tervinter pawn that has amounted to nothing but destruction, watching while someone else tries to clean up your mess.’_

 

Dorian staggered and his legs threatened to give way, but he stayed upright— _somehow_ —eyes fixed on his blue star.

Fenris hacked down through another leg and propelled into a roll under the Great Spider’s abdomen, with lightning speed. From that vantage, he slashed with fury, out of the legs’ reach. His blade hacked, and his mouth ran: guttural bellows of words indecipherable amongst the shrieks of the Demon, but words that spoke clearly none the less— of _fury_. Anguish. Despair. Wrath.

The demon twisted this way and that, scuttling from side to side, trying to uncover the little thorn in its side, but Fenris moved _with_ it, with calculated grace.

As if that wasn’t enough. Enter: A giant quivering bulbous stinger, affixed to the tail of the abdomen, and sticky with some stingy mucous. It reared up, as though to strike like a scorpion’s tail. It struck at Fenris like a viper—

He caught his blade against the long stinger—

A clash like iron on iron rung out.

And demon and elf battled. Demon; buckling like some great bull, trying to throw Fenris free from out underneath it. Elf; _en garde_ against a deadly spear, whilst working footwork and speed as to remain in the beast’s shadow.

 _He’s incredible_ , Dorian knew to every pit of his exhausted _aching_ flesh. Yet for all Fenris’s wrath, there was so much body to cut away at. It was like he was trying to flatten a mountain with one shovel.

 

There was a sizzling crack of two realms grinding together, and seven more demons—Terrors—materialized on the field.

 _Fenris is dead as soon as he is distracted_ , Dorian considered, seeing the ever-lunging stinger taking nearly all the quick elf’s attention to parry. Dorian called on _wildfire_ , igniting a pair of demons closest to Fenris. They flailed about, aburst, writhing, panicked and immolating, and finally crumbled. A threat no longer.

Two down. Five terrors to go, versus and one exhausted man with half a mind, one hand, no staff, and not nearly enough wine for this.

He looked about him: two on his left, three on his right, limbs stiffed and wound, ready to release their wrath on him.

‘I don’t supposed you chaps would like to come at me one at a time?’ Dorian said, backing away to try and draw the demons together into one target. They tired of stalking him and lunged, coming on every side.

‘Thought not.’

He whipped his hand through the air, drawing a _Wall of Fire_ from the Fade to stay the three demons that flanked his left. _That will buy me four seconds enough for—_

He whipped to his right, back near _blistering_ against the searing heat, and conjured _Winter’s Chill_. One terror snap-froze, mid-lunge, encrusted with jagged crystals of ice. A second narrowly escaped the direct force, but struggled with its sluggish limbs, its advance slowed.

Fire and ice sprawled the battlefield.

Dorian took the precious second he had bought himself, and launched further back. He put as much distance between himself and aggressors as his heavy, weak body could muster, before the spells collapsed and the freed demons stalked again, now even more murderous, driven berserk by the magic. Dorian had to think fast: he didn’t have enough Mana rejuvenated yet to call on an _Ice Storm_ , nor on a _Lightning Cage,_ that might draw all the Terrors together and bind them. He had to buy time. Fire. Ice. Lightning.

Dorian rained them all down on the gaining enemy, and all the while, the Nightmare’s bone splitting shrieks needled at his concentration; his fortitude; hounding him to succumb to blind panic. And his spells…with only enough Mana primed for lesser attacks, they barely hindered the Terrors’ advance. Worse, Dorian could see them readying themselves, sniffing for the Fade to phase their way into, and then there would be no telling where they would reappear.

He had _seconds_ to narrow the number advantage. What he’d give to cast a simple protection spell.

 _Couldn’t have learnt a bit of spirit magic, Dorian?_ He muttered under his breath through gritted teeth, as he executed a torrent of lesser spells. _Wasn’t flashy enough for you, was it?_

A Terror crumbled, followed by a second. There were three left, but he could only see two, and _that meant_ —

The ground opened up beneath him.  One second his feet knew solid ground and the next, the awful _nothing_ of rushing air, and the lurch of his falling in his stomach. Then he connected with earth once more. His back hit stone. _Crack._ And looking up was the open jaws of the Terror, flecked and rabid with froths of saliva.Dorian knew what came next: _claws like knives, ruining your best robes and your better chest._

The tiny light in Dorian’s sixth sense flickered on. _Mana: replenished._ Pure muscle memory took over. He cast _Lightening Cage._ In a second, Dorian went from utterly helpless, to a reckoning force. A bolt of lightning struck the terror, raising every hair on Dorian with the static of the charge. The lightning lurched the demon backwards, off Dorian’s body, and into a paralysing cage of agony with the rest of its kin. Through his a haze of blood, Dorian watched as all the Terrors convulsed until their joints stiffened and they fell down, dead.

He clambered to his feet, slipping on the blood torrenting from chest and hand. The nightmare erupted with another core-curdling shriek, and Dorian looked to Fenris who was now soaked in the beast’s black curdling blood. It rained down on him in torrents from the tunnelling wound Fenris had hacked up into its belly.

 _He could do this,_ Dorian realised, eyes barely able to follow the phasing and dodging elf, senses lost to everything but his single minded thirst for vengeance.

 _If I can hold off the waves of terrors long enough,_ he thought.

There was no way to close the rift, but if they could at least _finish the nightmare once and for all…_

But the rift wasn’t crackling—

A second wave hadn’t come. That meant one thing—Dorian counted the slain terrors: six?

There had been _seven_ —

 

Something slammed into his back. It was sharp. It had iron force. And it was imbedding into his flesh and driving deeper. Dorian’s entire body shuddered forward at the force, but a long spindly claw sank into his shoulder, holding him in place against that moving object. He struggled, _needing_ to move himself out of its path—a split second more of resistance, and he’d be—

 

His mind: white.

The floor before him: smattered with red.

 

It took him a while to understand what he was seeing, just staring down stupidly at _it_.

A bloodied claw—caught on stretched and taught _bits of him_ —stuck out of his front. Ridiculous. Like some bad joke.

It snapped closed in a fist, and he felt the tendons and muscles tense in response _from his inside_ , readying to wrench its way back through the tunnel it had ploughed.

 

 _‘Please_ ,’ he rasped, his voice sounding grotesque. Wet. Bubbling. ‘Make…yourself… _at home._ ’

The full force of _Winter_ erupted from his core, petrifying the arm and forbidding it freedom. Freezing ice numbed his severed, haywire nerves—no small mercy. The spell spread like cold wild, creeping up the arm to the rest of the terror behind Dorian. He couldn’t see it, but its helpless tugging illustrated its panic enough on realizing its own fate was sealed.

The thing’s screams cut off, and the two bodies toppled. On impact with the ground, the seventh terror shattered like glass across the floor.

 

Dorian lay, the piece of frozen arm still piercing him, acting as the only thing keeping his blood in. His body was shaking, jerking, coughing, numbing.

Dying.

 

With effort, he twisted his head to see Fenris, blade a blur of hacking, but for all his ferocity, it wasn’t enough. Already more terrors were materializing on the field. Fenris saw them. Searched for his backup. Found him.

The elf barely dived away in time, as the nightmare’s stinger plunged through the space his body had occupied split-seconds before. All the attack melted from Fenris’ movement suddenly, and defence became his only objective.

 _He is hesitating,_ Dorian knew. _He knows it is hopeless now I’ve failed._ Things flickered.

Blackened.

Next he knew, the distant world was spinning, carrying his consciousness back to his body, and so much pain. Dorian’s vision tunnelled to a face, edges of his vision blurring out everything in the world but Fenris, looking down on him. And Fenris held him. In his lap. Clutched close to his pounding heart.

‘Don’t you have a giant demon to throw yourself away on,’ Dorian slurred slowly, coughing and spitting up hot splashes of blood down his own chin. ‘In the name of tragic vengeance? It would be…narratively appropriate…you realise.’

The shrieks behind them drilled terror to Dorian’s very core and he saw. He saw the same, reflected in Fenris’ eyes, but the elf’s face was hardened and proud.

‘I think now my place is here,’ Fenris said, his voice low and rumbling under the screeches that drew closer. Anchoring. The elf twitched like he was fighting every urge to turn his head to helplessly see the death that surged toward them. ‘I won’t fear it,’ he murmured. ‘I won’t _feed_ it. I am no slave.’

Dorian reached out, wading a hand through air that felt too heavy, needing to touch Fenris before the end. But his hand fell back on his chest, not knowing warmth of Fenris’s skin again, and blackness closed in.

‘ _Dorian_ —’ but his ears dulled. It was the last he heard. 

 

_All is undone_

_Ash in the sun_

_Cast into darkness_

_The light we had won._

  

*

 

There was a man who they said had saved the world. People had fallen at his feet when he’d returned from the final battle against Corypheus. _Inquisitor_. They thought him a holy man, and the celebrations had seemed as if they’d never cease. He hadn’t however, in his heart, been able to bring himself to join them. The world may have been saved for _them_ , and he was glad, but it hadn’t been saved for all. Not for those who had given themselves to the cause.

Often he had slipped away to walk the endless lines of graves. At some untellable stage, Trevelyan had stopped walking in the world of the living, and the Inquisitor had begun to deal in death. The world may have been saved, but _his_ world, the one he had been bound to now, was found in the silence of soil. The families with an empty seat at their table. To the last resting places of his soldiers.

 

When he had determined to set out from Skyhold, bound for the Hissing Wastes, he had toyed with the thought of calling on the Chateau D’Ete. That had been put to its end when Leliana had suggested against it. From that advice he had become _determined_ to.

 

Trevelyan stood on the stairs that descended into the ballroom below, faced with the cataclysm before him.

He’d saved the world but not for _this_.

‘I am—’ he began aloud, calmly, _calmly_ , assessing the colossal Nightmare, dragging itself along the hall pouring out a trail of black blood—

‘—really—’

The torn Veil. The seething demons—

‘—very—’

His two men, about to be overcome—

‘— _extraordinarily_ —’

 

_‘Afraid?’_

The Nightmare purred, voice quaking the room and crawling into every crack of the physical plane like one billion spiders.

The Inquisitor raised his hand out to the sky.

 _‘_ I was going to go with: _Pissed off.’_

 

Green sparks exploded.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In summary: *Inquisitor bursts through the door* "DADDY'S HOME." 
> 
> I'm sure by now I've tortured you all well and truly with my cliff hanger endings. My darling beta Anna send her corrections back thinking it was the end of the story and I couldn't stop laughing because WOW THAT WOULD BE A RUDE WAY TO FINISH IT. However, I'm a big fan of happy endings...! B~)


	11. XI

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just gonna slide this one under the door...  
>   
> (Thanks Anna)

 

 

 

Dorian woke two weeks later, to his astonishment, alive.

 _Alive_.

Certainly breathing, at least. That much was a miracle, though his vision was, for a long time, no more than a grey, nothingish blur. Colours slowly filtered back in and he came to see a ceiling. He fixed on it, first trying to recall everything, and then hastily trying to _unrecall_ it. His senses slowly sharpened to soft breathing of someone, from the foot of his bed.

‘Fenris?’ he croaked, daring to _hope_. If Dorian himself was alive (and great mercy, _how_?), then it was possible. _Maker_ , it was possible.

‘It’s me’, came the answer, voice instantly recognizable. Not Fenris. Trevelyan. He moved to Dorian’s side and dropped to his knee, familiar face swimming into view. He was clenching his jaw like he did when he was about to have hard words.

Dorian closed his eyes, numb. ‘Dead, isn’t he?’

‘Yes’, Trevelyan answered gently.

‘Was it quick?’ Dorian asked. He _had_ to know.

‘Didn’t stand a chance’, Trevelyan said. ‘Well and truly dead. I saw to that personally.’

Dorian sat bolt upright. ‘You _what_?’

‘Are we…?’ The Inquisitor faulted, looking both embarrassed and confused. ‘Are we not talking about the Nightmare?’

‘ _Fenris,’_ Dorian snapped, clutching at his seizing heart.

‘Oh! Fenris is fine.’ The Inquisitor assured him, breaking into laughter. ‘Battered, but on his feet. It’s _you_ who very nearly didn’t make it.’

Dorian could have strangled the man, and searched for his hands to do it. That was the second miracle: he still had two. One was mostly numb, but he could move it a little. That _was_ comforting.

Trevelyan watched as Dorian managed to wriggle his fingers. He managed to curl down his ring and little finger, and raised the other two at the Inquisitor, in the universal language of _sod off_. Trevelyan laughed, and Dorian felt a wry smile creep onto his own face.

‘I am relieved to see you still retain some humor,’ Trevelyan said, and then mirth was put aside for serious concern. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Terrible,’ Dorian admitted, dizzy from his still-pounding chest. ‘I don’t know whether you noticed the giant gaping hole through me. It’ll scar terribly.’ He shook his head. ‘I am _furious_ at myself.’

‘Well, that makes two of us’, Trevelyan said, his smile now noticeably strained. ‘Had I known just what ulterior motivations you and Leliana had stitched up in you coming here, I’d never have agreed to it.’

‘With respect, that was precisely why you _didn’t_ know, Inquisitor,’ Dorian said. ‘That was sort of the point. How _did_ you manage to swoop in and save the day as always, even still? Mastered teleportation too, lately, with that anchor of yours?’

‘I have business west of here.’ Trevelyan said. ‘When I mentioned that I was toying with the idea of dropping by the Chateau on my way, Leliana advised me against it.’

‘So naturally you headed straight here?’

The Inquisitor smiled and looked down to his lap. ‘I’m not as entirely clueless as I like Leliana to think. Nor is she as unreadable to me.’ He admitted. ‘I’m glad I followed my gut. I was a week behind you, and thank the Maker I did not delay.’ He clenched his fist. ‘She _knew_ how you feel about me. She knew you would throw yourself in the way of harm for me, and play her game at secrecy. I’m furious and disappointed in you both.’

Dorian cringed, feeling like a boy being scolded by a parent.

‘And _you_ know how I feel about people dying on my behalf,’ Trevelyan continued. ‘How was I supposed to carry that kind of grief, knowing I was the reason you had died? Don’t you know how much I need you, Dorian?’

Dorian met Trevelyan’s eyes feeling foolish, terrible, and so very loved.

Trevelyen sighed and sat on the bed. ‘I’ll admit,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘I do feel…tremendously better. Knowing that monster is destroyed for good, and that _I_ got to do it. I hadn’t known how badly I needed that. I feel…closure, at last.’

‘You are an absolute headcase and I hope you know that, Inquisitor,’ Dorian said. ‘But one we are so obscenely blessed to have.’

Trevelyan laughed and stood up. ‘Feel better soon, Dorian,’ he said with a wry smile and, with a warning in his eye, added, ‘and don’t ever do that to me again. You know I always find out what is going on. The fact they call me ‘Inquisitor’, is the hint.’

 

*

 

When Dorian felt strong enough to venture from his room in search of Fenris, their conversation didn’t last long. Dorian found him sitting out in a courtyard, whetstone in hand, at work sharpening his blade. The elf sensed his approach.

‘Pavus,’ he said, without needing to turn around. Was he that primed to the sound of Dorian’s footsteps? And _Pavus_. It wasn’t _Mage_ , but it wasn’t even close to _Dorian_ either. Fenris jerked his head towards him. ‘How are you?’ The inquiry sounded merely polite. It was…not what Dorian had expected, or was it disappointing, because it…was not what he had desired?

‘Much more myself,’ Dorian admitted, but Fenris’ eyes moved to something over Dorian’s shoulder. On turning, Dorian saw Trevelyan approaching them, and when he turned back to Fenris, the elf was already making his way from the yard.

 

It wasn’t that Fenris was avoiding the Inquisitor, like Dorian had first assumed. When Dorian saw him next, he was in deep in conversation with Trevelyan. The two of them stood amidst the ruin of the ballroom, surrounded by Inquisition workers busied with reparations. It was instead this time on _Dorian’s_ approach that the elf excused himself briskly. Dorian reached the Inquisitor, staring after the elf with a familiar ache. Oh Maker, _mercy_. It was longing.

Trevelyan raised his eyebrow at Dorian, but politely said nothing of it.  

‘I want to ask you something, Dorian,’ Trevelyan raised. ‘The prisoner. He is onroute back to Skyhold, to be held until I return there and then I must pass judgment. Fenris has already so kindly offered his service in ripping out the man’s heart, should we require it.’ Trevelyan gave a wry smile.

‘Fenris has proven to be good at that,’ Dorian said. He felt a stab of fear for his own.

‘But what do _you_ wish to happen to the bloodmage, Dorian?’

The mage folded his arms across his chest. ‘I’d be lying if I pretended that even after it all, some small part of me didn’t feel pity for him,’ he admitted, watching the men and women shifting away the rubble. It would be no small measure to say that _forgiveness_ was on his mind.

‘Do you think he might be rehabilitated?’ Trevelyan suggested gently.

‘There are cases where that is deserved.’ Dorian considered. ‘Fenris is the best example. But Alander…’

 _No. Not him,_ Dorian knew. He had seen the monster. ‘He is cruel, manipulative, and far too dangerous so long as he commands magic. I won’t say I wish him dead, but if I never have to see him again…’

‘Very well.’ Trevelyan said. ‘Leliana will draw what she can from him, and then he will be made tranquil and sent to a circle.’

There was irony. Alander had taken Dorian’s free will, and now on Dorian’s advice, Alander would pay the price of his own. It may have been just, even deserved, but to Dorian it brought no pleasure.

‘And Dorian?’ The Inquisitor said.

‘Hm?’

‘You were possessed. We’ve seen it before. I don’t blame you.’

‘That’s kind of you to say,’ was all Dorian could reply.

If only it was so easy to convince himself.

 

*

 

The Inquisitor was to ride west to the Exalted Plains, but had already postponed his journey by three weeks now to see Dorian wake and recover.

‘When you’re strong enough I’ll ride out with you,’ Trevelyan had said. ‘Our way is common for a day before I’ll split off west.’

At that parting, Fenris and Dorian would return to Skyhold, and Dorian would hold up the Inquisitor’s business no longer. Dorian determined to bare any discomfort in silence, insisting at being well enough for the journey, and urging them to be on their way.

 

On the offset, Fenris took the lead again, leaving Trevelyan and Dorian to ride side by side. Dorian’s eyes fixed on the elf’s back, tracing his eyes over his riding leathers where he knew scars ran beneath. It was too easy to recall how the muscles rippled beneath Fenris’s skin. Dorian gripped his reigns tighter in hand, as he recalled how the elf’s skin had heated under Dorian’s touch.

How it had tremored.

How Fenris had gasped.

Moaned.

 

*

 

All too soon, but far too late, Dorian realized that he had been hasty to leave the Chateau. Despite Fenris setting a far gentler pace than their last journey, and Trevelyan often calling for rests, by mid-afternoon Dorian’s eyes grew blurred. A number of times, he caught himself slumping forward against his horse for support and slipping in the saddle.

Then, as the day was winding down to golden light, Dorian sharpened suddenly to the jerk of his horse pulling to a halt. He opened his eyes as was met with the alert greens of Fenris, who held Dorian’s reigns in hand and had pulled both their mounts to a stop. Dorian realized he’d slid out of consciousness completely for a moment, and had Fenris not noticed, he’d have surely fallen completely from his mount.

‘Alright?’ Fenris checked, quietly.

Dorian nodded, surging with warm gratitude he didn’t know what to do with.

‘Is this not a good place to make camp for the night?’ Fenris called ahead to the Inquisitor, who had ridden ahead, unaware to the scene. He turned his horse and looked back, taking notice of Dorian. He nodded in consensus, and Dorian practically fell to the ground in humble relief.

 

They made their preparations in setting up camp. Fenris made quick work in erecting his tent. Dorian however, had not so far as managed to get his own unloaded from the horse with his one working hand and heavy exhausted limbs, but _Maker be damned, he wasn’t going to ask for help._ Fenris, feet almost soundless on the forest floor, approached and wordlessly shouldered Dorian out of the way. He hoisted the canvas out in one easy motion, setting to work in constructing it.

‘I was a fool you know, what I said about slavery.’ Dorian admitted, watching on, helpless, and breaking the long, awkward silence. Fenris had been hammering a tent pin into the ground, and stilled the hammer mid air, listening.

‘Poverty in the south is terrible,’ Dorian continued, ‘but I was wrong in thinking Tevinter is any better. The only thing that slavery is superior at is _hiding_ people’s suffering. More comfortable for the nobles that way I suppose.’ he frowned. ‘It’s all very neat to say the magisterium is giving slaves a life they’d never otherwise have. But that’s not the problem, is it? To have your mind… _invaded_ like that. That’s how it feels, doesn’t it?’

Fenris fixed his eyes on the pin and gave one small nod.

‘That’s no _life.’_ Dorian said. ‘It’s something less _._ Only by having my free will taken away, did I really begin to understand what it meant. _Do…_ I understand it…? _’_

‘I hope that you never need to, beyond that,’ Fenris said. ‘But hearing your doubts gives me…solace.’

There was another silence, and Fenris’s hammer remained still, as if he was deep in thought.

‘I’m afraid I’ll quite have stolen your attention back in Skyhold.’ Dorian said, unable to abide the silence longer. ‘Ah, I missed it. The fleeting looks across the room, the whispering behind hands, _“that one. That evil bloodmage vint_ ” It will be nice to feel relevant again. I do so love attention.’

‘You’re no blood mage,’ Fenris said, and shaking his head in sudden vigor and getting to his feet. He met Dorian’s eyes.

‘Nice of you to say,’ Dorian said, unable to hold that intense gaze, and looking down at his feet like a boy, ashamed. ‘But you really aren’t good at this: you thought I was when I wasn’t, and now you’re saying I’m not when clearly, I am.’

‘That wasn’t you.’ Fenris denied. _Defended_. ‘I never thought someone like _you_ could exist. Not in Tevinter. Especially not someone destined for the Magisterium. Thinking of someone like _you_ wielding that power…it gives me a kind of hope I don’t think I’ve ever had.’

Dorian couldn’t say a word to that.

Who else in the world could have given him higher praise?

Not a soul. That was certain.

‘I…’ Fenris glanced across to the Inquisitor. ‘The way you’ve spoken about the Inquisitor… he really does _care_ for his men, doesn’t he?’

Dorian nodded. ‘Refreshing, isn’t it?’

‘Hawke was like that.’ Fenris said. ‘He must have recognized it in your Inquisitor. Maybe…that’s why he did what he did. Maybe he truly believed that your Inquisitor was going to save Thedas. Maybe…he’d be proud of me for helping.’

They stood there for a time, watching the Inquisitor as he set camp across the clearing. ‘He cares for you a great deal.’ Fenris murmured, shifting his stance a little. ‘It is obvious to me.’

‘He does,’ Dorian said with an affectionate smile. ‘I am completely and entirely his man, whatever may come.’

‘I…of course,’ Fenris said, seizing up. _Careful_. ‘That night we…you thought it was your last—you were possessed…if it was only a distraction, if it was only lust…if you were imagining that I were your _Inquisitor_ …’

Dorian snapped his eyes back to Fenris who was studying him.

He suddenly understood.

Fenris thought there was something between Trevelyan and Dorian. So that’s what it had been about? He hadn’t been avoiding Dorian _or_ the Inquisitor. He’d been leaving them alone. Together. But there was nothing between them, Dorian realized. The longings he’d had for the Inquisitor for so long…they were gone. They hadn’t even crossed his mind. He cared for Trevelyan deeply, he loved him, yes, and he knew without a doubt that it was returned, but…

It was for someone else now that his blood surged and his heart ached.

This damned, stupid, _unbearable_ elf.

‘That night couldn’t have been anything more to _you_ , I know,’ Dorian said, voicing the awful truth of it he knew he had to face. ‘Not with me, being what I am. A mage. An Altus. Not even if I wished it otherwise.’

And, Maker, _there_ Dorian went, letting his foolish battered heart tumble out on show like usual.

Fenris blinked slowly, looking at Dorian with wide, surprised eyes at his answer.

‘Of course…’ he said. ‘Have I really given you any reason to think otherwise? Truthfully, I tried to block you out and instead imagine it was Hawke touching me again.’

Dorian dropped his gaze to his feet, stomach twisting, and _why_? Of course Fenris had. What else could it have been? How could Dorian have compared to The Champion of Kirkwall? To a love like that?

‘Or so I tried to, at first.’ Fenris continued, taking a step closer. ‘but… _you_ …are nothing like I expected. You’re everything I’ve hated, but somehow…I can’t seem to care about that anymore. I can’t stop playing that night over in my mind…’ Fenris pushed his hands through his hair in frustration. ‘I’ve felt so conflicted, so _guilty_ , but I look at you, and I…’

Dorian could barely breath, lest he miss Fenris’ next words.

‘For the longest time now I’ve been living on in a world that for me, ended with Hawke.’ Fenris flickered his eyes to fix on Dorian’s with something burning in them. Something, that made Dorian shiver. ‘Vengeance.’ Fenris said. ‘I was mad with it. Driven berserk on that battlefield facing that demon, completely content to let it claim me. Vengeance was all I had left to want for. Or so I had thought.’

‘Your mind changed?’ Dorian had tried not to sound desperate for the answer. He had failed.

‘When I saw you, laying there,’ Fenris shook his head, as if lost in dark memories. ‘I feared you already slain, and… Suddenly _vengeance_ didn’t matter anymore.’ but then Fenris fell silent, jerking his head, watchful of the approaching Inquisitor.

Dorian faintly registered Trevelyan’s inquiry as to whether he was feeling better.

‘Yes,’ Dorian said breathlessly, eyes fixed still on Fenris. ‘I am feeling…significantly revived.’ 

‘Glad to hear it,’ Trevelyan said, looking between the two of them and in awkward realization, decided there was somewhere else he had to be. ‘I’ll…rub down the horses.’ 

‘Are you saying that _I_ changed your mind?’ Dorian said breathlessly, turning Fenris’s infinitely precious words over in his head, needing to know why. Needing it so much.

‘Yes. Even if we seemed doomed, even if it was too late…’ Fenris took a step closer to Dorian. ‘When I held you in my arms, Maker I wanted you to live. I realised _I_ wanted to live.’

_That confession._

And, delivered by Fenris with a self-conscious smirk that hardly masked the emotion of his admission.

‘You know,’ Dorian said, lifting his hand to stroke Fenris’ cheek. ‘You’re really starting to flag in your insults’.

‘I guess my heart’s not in them anymore’, Fenris smiled, turning his head to brush his lips against Dorian’s fingers, pulling a small smile. ‘It’s…somewhat distracted’.

 

*

 

Holding himself off from Fenris for the duration of the evening would have been near-impossible enough for Dorian, without Fenris also fixing him with his intense gaze across the flames of the campfire. Promising. Thirsting.

Dorian tried to concentrate on what the Inquisitor was saying, but it was hard when all he could think about was the way Fenris bit his lip, or pushed his hair back out of his eyes.

‘But I’ve kept you up long enough,’ Trevelyan said finally, snapping closed an ancient tome he’d dug up from Maker-knows-where. On a usual evening, Dorian would have been entirely absorbed in it, translating the ancient Tevene, but…

‘I’ve never been sleeping so well as I have recently.’ Trevelyan yawned loudly. ‘I wager nothing will wake me.’ Then he added, ‘Do try and get some sleep yourself, Dorian.’ It sounded enough like the innocent entreating of a concerned friend, but Dorian caught the second where the Inquisitor’s mouth twitched into a knowing smirk. One second only, and then his face was all earnest diplomacy again, and he took his leave.

‘A true friend,’ Dorian laughed, watching the flap of the Inquisitor’s tent fall closed.

He could turn his attention on Fenris at _last_.

Dorian had barely turned his head toward him, before the elf seized two fistfuls of Dorian’s collar and caught his mouth in a desperate, _forceful_ kiss. _So_ forceful; it knocked Dorian entirely off the tree stump he’d made a seat of. He thumped to the ground, and the impact sent a sharp jab through his back and chest. Fenris was immediately sensitive to the pain he’d caused, and began to pull back.

‘Oh no you _don’t_ —’ Dorian shot out his one good hand, caught the elf by his shirt collar, and wrenched him back in. He hadn’t meant to be rough. For a second, he fully expected Fenris to pull back in a triggered panic.

He didn’t.

Rather; every muscle in Fenris’s body seemed to melt to the demand, in perfect comfort. Far from resisting, Fenris rushed back and caught Dorian’s mouth again on the full. He ran his tongue over Dorian’s top lip. Licked the seam of his mouth, coaxing him open.

 _Fuck, Don’t stop_ Dorian would have gasped, if his mind and mouth were under any semblance of his own command. As it were, he was helpless to do anything but meet Fenris’s bruising kisses and submit to the commands of his invading tongue.

Hot. Wet. The maddening thrill of being _filled_ by Fenris…of being pinned to the ground beneath him, at his complete mercy.

Dorian knew what his body needed. And Fenris was in perfect tune to those desires.

‘I _want_ you,’ Fenris growled, pulling off from Dorian’s panting mouth, to graze his throat with teeth.

‘No objections here,’ Dorian gasped, and his voice sounded distant, and… Maker, it was humiliating how so pitifully _desperate_ he’d allowed himself to sound. He tensed, waiting to feel Fenris recoil. Instead, the elf let out a low, hungered growl in answer. Dorian’s blood surged as if on command.

‘It’s hard for me to hold back, when I need you like this,’ Fenris warned, and perhaps it was unconscious the way the elf was digging his nails into Dorian’s arm. Dorian couldn’t have given less of a fuck. Scratch him, bite him, it would all feel so good. To be _claimed_.  

‘Who said anything about holding back?’

‘You wouldn’t believe the lengths I went through to keep you alive, mage,’ Fenris said. How was it that now, _mage_ sounded like a pet name? Some private joke now between the two of them? ‘I’m not now going to break you. Stay here.’

He climbed off Dorian, the void he left filled with icy night air. Fenris ducked within his tent for a moment, before returning with a mat and blankets. He threw them down on the ground, making a messy nest that Dorian had to admit, _was_ better than the sticks and rocks jabbing into his back.

Dorian lay in the blankets feeling urgent.

Fenris straddled Dorian’s hips and began to unpick the clasps of Dorian’s riding clothes. He stared down at the skin, unveiled. Gently he smeared his thumb over the flesh—Ruined. A battlefield of scarring, but healed, _whole._ Dorian closed his eyes, lost to the drag of Fenris’s leather gloves against his naked skin.

‘It’s healed better than I expected.’ Fenris remarked, sounding both pleased and, what, _sulky_?

‘Something to do with those lengths you went to?’ Dorian presumed, running his hand down over the waxy taut scar, trying to recreate Fenris’ gentle touch for himself.

Fenris nodded. ‘I rode out in search of a healer I’ve had past dealings with—an abomination that I’d have already put down, but for Hawke. He thought otherwise. Still, I keep a sense of this mage’s whereabouts. I never thought that if I tracked him down, it would be for a favor.’ He shuddered at the clearly abhorrent notion. ‘But had I not, you’d have died. By the time I arrived back with him, it was almost too late already.’ Fenris darted his eyes to meet Dorian’s. He furrowed his brow and and folded his arms, adding, ‘You’re smiling at me like you enjoy my suffering.’

‘I do, very much.’ Dorian said. In fact, he felt that were he apart from this elf for much longer, he’d go mad. He wrapped his arm around Fenris’s waist and pulled him down. The elf made a little grumpy, half-hearted, protest on principal, which was forgotten the moment he reached Dorian’s lips. Instinct took over. It didn’t take long for their remaining clothes to be hastily ripped off and thrown aloft and afar into the dewy grass. The naked heat of Fenris shielded Dorian from the chilling night, and the moon shone behind his beautiful silvery head like a halo. He slid down Dorian’s body, planting light lingering kisses down to his belly, taking a hold of Dorian’s legs and spreading them wide. He climbed between them, raking his nails up the inside of Dorian’s thighs and lightly, _lightly_ pressing his fingertips into perineum, massaging little circles that awakened the prostate, deep within. That surprised Dorian. No man had ever taken such gentle measures of foreplay with him…and his body was responding. He rocked his hips in little jerks and the fingers pressed firmer, working their way south, and slowly, _achingly_ slowly, began to push in and out.

Fenris let out a soft appreciative hiss, and looking up at Dorian through his lashes. ‘You have…good tone,’ he remarked, and furrowed his brow in concentration, pushing in deeper and—

 _Oh—_ Dorian threw his head back and mouthed soundlessly. Fenris knew _exactly_ where to rub to make his toes curl and his hips buck. It didn’t take long and Dorian was achingly hard and beading with sweat, pinned beneath Fenris, filled by two— _three_ of his fingers inside, and all the while Fenris was stroking them together in tight pumps of his fist.

Dorian’s body was fast melting away into nothing but intensifying, addictive pleasure, no longer coming from any defined locus. Fenris’s every bite and suck send shocks of sensation surging down through his nerves. Dorian’s lips, his neck, his chest—all connected sensation to his straining cock, and the deep ache Fenris was rubbing inside him. Every nail mark Fenris had scratched and dug into Dorian’s wrists—hips—arse— All stung together in a near-overloading sensory hum, no longer pain nor pleasure, but pure aching reminder that he was claimed, _needed_. He was in pure ecstasy and he needed _more_ , regardless of whether he could even take it or not. And he could feel Fenris struggling on the brink of control—the wildness—the _wolf_ in him—just _barely_ under leash. It threatened to claim complete control, restrained only by a fear of harming an already injured Dorian, but already blooded to the sounds of his moans.

‘ _Give it to me_ ,’ Dorian finally pleaded, in a voice: hoarse and needy and completely unmade. That broke the last thread of Fenris’s resolve: he pulled out his fingers.

‘On your front.’ he commanded, with gravel in his deep voice. Dorian obeyed, corkscrewed on the fingers still inside him. He leant his face on his injured arm, bracing it from rubbing against the ground and lifted his arse on shaky knees. Fenris withdrew his fingers and fitted the tip of his already wet cock in their place. He pushed against the tight ring of muscle, hissing at the pressure of the resistance and sinking his nails into Dorian’s stomach. Fenris worked his thumbs down into the muscle of Dorian’s hips and groin, and with one hard jerk, wrenched him back against him, driving deep inside. The shuddering cry from Dorian would have been enough to wake the forest, but Fenris closed his hand on Dorian’s chin and pull his face to the side, catching— _smothering_ —him in a forceful kiss. Keeping perfectly still in him, the elf moved his soft lips to Dorian’s ear. In low, animalistic possessiveness, Fenris growled two words: ‘You’re _mine_.’

He drew slowly out of Dorian’s arse, only to slam back in, hitting that perfect aching angle that made Dorian’s cock twitch and leak.

‘ _Helplessly_ —’ Dorian gasped, barely able to suck air before the next plunging jolt of pleasure made his vision swim and his knees threaten to give entirely. ‘ _Fuck—’_ The slick thickness, stretching him almost to the limit, withdrew again. He could feel every ridge knot against him from inside, sucking out of him with a wet pop and leaving him for a moment; desperately empty. Then Fenris drove in once more, spearing into Dorian’s swollen and throbbing gland with a resounding slap of flesh on flesh. Then again. And again. Faster… _faster_ , and Dorian pushed himself back hard against the elf, taking it _all_ , near-blind from the white hot _slow_ pleasure that assaulted his entire nervous system. All he could do was grip his throbbing cock tightly in hand and feel his hot slow cum squirt and dribble down over his fingers as he was milked from the inside. All he could hear was Fenris’s sharp gasps and growls and little desperate whines against his ear, and the smacking of hard working, wet _, slick,_ flesh.

‘More!’ he begged, and he could feel sweat dripping off the elf onto his back. Fenris growled mindlessly in response, grabbing Dorian by the hips and slamming him back onto every inch of cock.

‘Please—‘ Dorian cried. ‘Fuck! _Please—I’ll—_ ’

His back snapped rigid and an immolating wave of numbing _white_ seized him. It threatened never to end.

He felt his face being gripped and turned; felt a wet open kiss smother his cry with likened desperation; felt a sudden jet of heat filling him up to capacity. Overflowing. Running down his legs.

The world seemed to lurch to a stop, and they collapsed together, boneless.

A minutes of jelly muscles and gasping like beached fish, and Fenris slowly pulled out and held himself up on weak arms long enough to coax Dorian onto his back. The elf collapsed onto Dorian’s chest, gazing up at him with lidded eyes and a contented smile. He tried to say something but it came out only as a soft sleepy moan.

‘From wolf to pup in seconds.’ Dorian chuckled, pushing Fenris’s sweat soaked hair from his brow, and pulling him up into a kiss. Slow. Lingering. Gentle. And when neither of them could stay awake a second longer, they drew the blankets over them, and Fenris nestled into the crook of Dorian’s neck.

 

*

 

They made slow hard love every night on their journey back to Skyhold, stifling each other’s moans with searing kisses and panting against one another’s necks.

Two weeks had never gone so quickly in Dorian’s life. Before he knew it, he found himself on the last evening of their journey home. It was a particularly bitter evening in the foothills of the Frostbacks and an icy wind cut through the threads of Dorian’s travel coat like it was rags. Shivering, Dorian set to igniting a fire and Fenris set up the tent they had taken to sharing, both in silent agreement that once the work was done, they’d seek out the heat of one another’s bodies.

As they rocked together within their tent, both tipping over into the blazing scorch of climax, Dorian lost himself. Clutching Fenris like a lifeline, he gasped a word, a confession, in Tevene.

The elf suddenly put a hand to Dorian’s chest, pushing him back to stare at him in surprise. ‘ _Amatus_?’ He repeated back.

‘Did I go too far?’ Dorian murmured, dropping his gaze in hot shame.

‘No one had ever called me that,’ Fenris said.

‘I meant it,’ Dorian admitted. ‘Shouldn’t I have?’

Fenris reached out and lifted Dorian’s chin to look him in the eyes. ‘I’ve been called many things in Tevene, but only in cruelty. That’s all I’ve known from the language.’ Fenris shook his head in wonder. ‘Then _you_ speak it to me, and from your mouth it becomes something else for the first time. How can you make me feel such a different extreme? You’re a world I didn’t think existed. I never thought I’d be someone’s Amatus, or want to be’, he brushed his fingers over Dorian’s lips. ‘but Maker _take_ me, Dorian, I want to be yours.’

 

*

 

By the next evening, Fenris and Dorian returned to Skyhold, already preceded by news of their mission. The Inquisitor had been evidently nothing short of saintly when he had sent back his re-telling of the event, and Leliana and Josephine worked like a pair of industrious spiders; spinning accounts of confused nobles into a gallant installment to the Inquisition’s mythos. Orlesians had a flexible attitude towards facts, and the way the ex-bard and ambassador put the events was embraced as a marvellous retelling they’d adopt. 

Never mind Dorian had summoned a demon.

He sat with Fenris, alone in a quiet corner of the Tavern, listening to the inspired recount from Maryden floating up through the rungs.

‘It seems, at worst, I’m a tragic damsel and you’re my hero,’ Dorian said to Fenris. ‘They really make it sound quite wonderful: a courageous desperate battle, spades of gallantry, our ingenious exposure of a deadly plot. And at the epic climax; the Inquisitor’s latest miracle. I’d have liked to be there for _that_. We both know what really happened.’

‘You bedded a psychopath and accidentally stumbled on a murder plot, while I did all the real work?’ Fenris suggested.

‘You’re not a psychopath,’ Dorian smirked, knowing full well that it wasn’t what Fenris had meant.

Fenris smiled. ‘You had better not tell anyone that. They’re already sidling up to me.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘I still can’t walk down a corridor without being assaulted, but now it’s with meaningless chat. It’s _worse_. I miss my peace and quiet.’

‘You’re happier,’ Dorian said, brushing white hairs out of Fenris’ eyes.

‘I am,’ he admitted, and curled his fingers around Dorian’s under the table. ‘Are you?’

‘I am, Amatus.’ he confirmed, and gazed at Fenris feeling almost unbearably so.

They’d both set out to expose a plot, and had. It had hardly been world-shattering heroics; there was the Inquisitor for that. Yet in Dorian and Fenris, there had been two smaller, fading worlds in desperate need of a saviour.

Now they were each other’s.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *deep breath* Thank you all so much for your comments and kudos and sticking with this story to the end, especially in light of my slow updating of the last few chaps. I’ve been in and out of hospital and procedures for MONTHS, and I wasn’t willing to compromise on quality because I’ve been wanting to give you only my VERY BEST. I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride!  
> This is the first experience of putting my writing out there and because of you all I will be doing it again when I get some stability back in my life! 
> 
> Special shout out (in no particular order!) to kihadu, besteck, sorb_aucup, Kleineganz, Tofiam, dragonfooted, paulah, Kamille, The_Real_Fenris, DeenaTweety, Froggie, Mooloodoom, HeroMaggie, and everyone else who has taken time to comment and give feedback. You guys fucking ROCK, thank you for tolerating me.
> 
> Also a little plug for The_Real_Fenris’s Dorian/Fenris fic [Good and Nobel Men](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4552152/chapters/10362081) cause I’m it loving it even though it has left my heart bleeding on the floor. (I’m not crying, it’s just raining on my face)
> 
> Additionally;  
> Shout out to my darling Jeorga who doesn’t even know dragon age but still reads my fic + works in a videogame shop and encourages STRANGERS OFF THE STREET JUST TRYING TO PICK UP AN HONEST MANLY VIDEOGAME, TO READ MY FANFICTION. Thank you any strangers out there who took a chance on some gay fic you weren’t looking for when walking into E.B games but read non-the-less cause the serving girl was hot and you wanted an in. And also sorry that it didn’t work out for you. 
> 
> And last but not least, thanks to my dedicated Beta, Anna, who put in heaps of work and lifted my game so much, pointing out helpful things like “how is he kissing him? I thought he was behind? Idk how anal works tbh”. I cherish you, you sarcastic monster.


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